Hi all

We jumped on the Stuart Highway and set about the eight hour drive up to Alice. The scenery got more and more barren as we headed further and further into the outback. Red sand and stunted bushes were order of the day. Great to look at for about an hour or so, but after four or five in the blistering heat it all gets a bit samey. So much so that our first sighting of a hill was met with a rousing cheer. We also invented a brand new game to entertain ourselves. It’s called, rather simply, Grid. It goes like this. Every time we drive across a cattle grid, we scream in mock fright. The hours flew by, let me tell you :o)

There were three ‘highlights’ along the way. The first was when we crossed into the Northern Territory. This was our third Australian state. The second was the sight of vultures (it turns out they’re actually eagles) ripping away at dead kangaroos in the middle of the desert. I genuinely love that, it gives a real feeling of being in the back of beyond. The third was a stop off in Stuarts Wells.

We pulled in at the ‘world famous’ Jim’s Place (although we didn’t know it at the time) and stood marveling at the inbred backwardness of the people for a few moments. It was like walking onto the set of ‘Deliverance’. All I wanted was a sandwich and it took five minutes just to accomplish the simple task of ordering one. While we waited for it to toast we looked round the gift shop. And it was then we realised we were in the presence of a genuine celebrity. Dinky The Singing Dingo. Who? What do you mean, who? Dinky The Singing Dingo. Now Dinky has performed all over the world apparently and doesn’t just sing, but plays the piano as well. Stop laughing, I’m serious. ‘Chopsticks’ by all accounts. We stood around taking the piss a bit too loudly for our own good, and when I laughingly asked if the flea bitten dingo lying asleep in the next room was Dinky, I was given a look that could have thawed an iceberg. A short sharp yes was all I got before my sandwich was delivered and we thought we’d better leave before some six fingered f***er started playing the banjo. I’m not sure what yokel spit tastes like, but I’m sure there was a healthy portion of it in my sandwich. Will I never learn?

On our arrival in Alice Springs it rather predictably started to piss down. I am now thoroughly convinced we are ‘Rainmakers’. One guy actually started dancing in the street when the rain came. For real. That’s how rare it is here. Still, it’s nice to bring a little joy into peoples’ lives.

When we got to the campsite we were told that this was a special night in Alice as the market was on and it doesn’t happen too often. Street entertainers. Stalls. Live bands. We dumped our stuff and rushed into town with only an hour to spare before it all shut down. And then Priscilla started paying silly b*****s. For some reason her lovely beautiful electric windows have started acting up. This started in Kalgoorlie a few days ago when suddenly we couldn’t wind the windows down. Although this isn’t ideal in 45 degree heat, at least we have air con. In any case, they usually start working again after a few miles. But when they get stuck in the down position when you’re about to park in the middle of town, it’s a little stressful. For fifteen valuable minutes we unsuccessfully pleaded with Priscilla to please work, but she simply wasn’t having it. Bint. We decided to drive round for a bit in the hope it was a loose wire and it’d jog back into place. Nope. We pulled over and feeling a bit hopeful, we popped the bonnet. The fuse wasn’t in properly. I must’ve jogged it back when the car conked out at the supermarket in Kalgoorlie. Priscilla’s now back to full health. So with about half an hour to go before the market shut down we rushed back to the town centre and spent the next ten minutes trying to find somewhere to park. Eventually we found somewhere and with twenty minutes remaining we ran into the market to make the most of the time we had left. It took approximately five minutes to walk all the way round it.

Hungry, deflated and starting to get really pissy we decided enough was enough for today and that we’d just get some fish and chips and go back for a decent night’s sleep. They took three quarters of an hour to produce and were easily the nastiest fish and chips I have ever eaten. Like eating a tramp’s vest. Worse even than the ones from the Albany Show. Still, the following day promised much, with a leisurely stroll round town, a visit to the Reptile Centre and a look round The Mbantua Cultural Museum. I couldn’t wait.

We woke up to blazing sunshine (27 during the night and up to 41 by mid morning, peaking at around 45 in case you’re wondering Kate) and headed to the pool for a quick swim before breakfast, which turned out to be a ropy KFC, much to Mand’s disgust. And then a wander through the Mbantua Art Centre to look at some indigenous art.

It was while we were strolling through here that something dawned on me with crystal clear clarity. Aboriginal art is over priced s***e. This was the third or fourth gallery we’d been round and, other than the one painting in Ceduna that I tried a bit too hard to like, I hadn’t seen anything that even remotely interested me. One of the ones in here was half a dozen blue and yellow lines on a piece of canvas about a foot by nine inches. The price? $300. I don’t care how much history these people have of painting, none of them can actually paint. In fact you’d think after all these thousands of years they’d have gotten at least a smidgen better. Apparently not. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it takes hours and hours to produce them, and some of them are really intricate. But the same can be said about Airfix model aeroplanes. And if I had nothing to do all day and was getting paid for it I reckon I could produce better. Then again, maybe I’m just a philistine who needs his art spoon feeding to him. Either way, at this point I decided enough was enough and that I’d rather be watching the Ashes in the pub.

So I left Mand to look round the rest of them and this is exactly what I did. At this point we were 47 for 2 and at lunch and I was beginning to wonder just what I had to do to enjoy myself in Alice Springs. The answer was to go to a didgeridoo shop. With Mand galleried out we headed into one and were treated to a display of didge playing (check the lingo) that blew my mind. The dude was amazing. After a quick attempt which saw us both producing a vaguely didge like sound, we were sold, and are now the proud owners of a beautiful C sharp didge. How cool is that? And the dude hold didge workshops on the Isle Of Wight of all places (his wife’s family live there) so we can go over and join in.

Next stop was the Reptile Centre which proved to be absolutely fantastic. We arrived just in time to hold a couple of lizards and an Olive Python (who was the cutest little thing ever) and then took a slow stroll round the centre proper. I loved it. Australia is home to the top ten most venomous snakes in the world. The most venomous is the Inland Taipan which can kill twelve people with a single drop of venom. Nice. They had one on display and also the second most poisonous - The Mulgara (this is where we realised the one we’d seen at the blowholes was proper nasty). One of the stories on one of the boards was quality. Some bloke’s wife had left him, he’d lost his house and custody of his kids in a costly court battle that had left him broke. So he went out on an absolute bender. After a few days of getting slaughtered, him and his mate were driving home when they saw a 6 metre (that’s metres, not feet) Mulgara by the side of the road. The guy decided he wanted to catch it. Now he was a fairly experienced snake catcher and so thought he knew what he was doing. The trouble was he still had hold of his beer in his ‘snake catching hand’ and rather than put it down he tried to catch the snake with his ‘wrong’ hand. Predictably enough the snake sank it’s fangs right into his arm. The guy jumps back into the car with the snake still attached to him (his mate made him hang his arm out of the window cos he can’t stand snakes) and they race off to the nearest town for help. Luckily enough, the first building they come to is a pub where the landlord just happens to be an expert snake doctor. That didn’t stop the guy having to have his arm amputated. How f***in mad is that? In the space of four months, the guy lost his wife, his kids, his house, his money and his left arm. Nice touch.

Out the back they also had a saltwater crocodile and the Strenthie that bit Steve Irwin a couple of years ago. Sweet. We watched the 14 year old work experience girl (they rather unkindly referred to her as ‘Expendable’ - as in ‘Oi Expendable, get the kettle on will ya?’ - top work experience that) feed some baby lizards with hundreds of live cockroaches and then it was time for the main event. The baby Olive Python we’d handled earlier (the adults grow to six metres and live for thirty years, fact fans) was brought out and fed a dead rat. Now that was top viewing. Did you also know that only the very end of the snake is the tail? On her it was about two inches. Everything else is stomach and internal organs. They also only have one lung, the other serves no purpose, much like a human appendix. Ooh, I’m so educated. Finally, we headed back in for a talk on the lizards we’d held earlier.

I won’t bore you any longer with what we learned about fangs, dealing with bites and how to tell the difference between snakes and legless lizards. Ok, just one and that’s the statistics. On average, 3000 people a year are bitten by snakes in Australia. Of these less than ten per cent actually have the venom injected into them (snakes don’t tend to waste venom on things they can’t eat - makes sense). Of these 300 or so that get injected about 3 or 4 actually die. And these tend to be because they don’t apply first aid, which is essentially an elasticated bandage on the limb. The venom is injected into the lymphatic system which runs between the skin and the muscle. By dressing the limb like a sprained ankle and then not moving it the venom just sits there without making it into your system. Sweet. The best way to stop bites? A pair of jeans and a pair of boots, That’s it. Their fangs are too small to get through. Suddenly I found myself feeling a lot safer. Also, on a slightly different note, no-one has died from a spider bite in Australia for 40 years. Safe as houses...

We finished up by holding a six foot Black Headed Python called Gavin. I have absolutely no idea why he was called Gavin and it seemed a little rude to ask. The girl giving the talk was treating them all like they were her kids and I thought she might take offence.We walked outside and into another huge rainstorm. It was absolutely falling out of the sky so we headed home for dinner, didgeridoo practice, JD and coke, and best of all to find that England were starting to look like contenders for the Ashes. Top end to a top day.

We awoke feeling slightly groggy from the night before’s excesses and weren’t entirely surprised to see it was still absolutely pissing down outside. Well, we were here after all. So we decided that we’d just spend the day chilling in the cabin and would go out if the weather got better. It didn’t. And I am so glad. I got to sit and watch as Collingwood and Pietersen took the Aussies apart, with Collingwood making history in the progress. They declared and then took Langer after only eight runs. Just gutted that I can’t afford to be sitting in a pub full of Aussies so I can really enjoy the full effect of it all. Still loving it though. A lot more than I’m loving Mand’s didge playing. Which, incidentally is coming on leaps and bounds already. As soon as she gets this circular breathing thingy sorted out, she’s going to be crash hot. Unlike myself who still has trouble even getting the basic drone out of the stupid piece of drainpipe. Ho hum.

Next day and the sun was finally shining and as it was Sunday we got free pancakes from the campsite. Now that’s what I’m talking about. Then we headed out for our first treat of the day which was a visit to the Olive Pink Botanic Garden. Now the name was a tad confusing to yours truly but it turns out that Olive Pink is the name of the woman who founded the place and was a real battler for Aboriginal rights and a staunch conservationist to boot. We took a short walk upwards to get a hilltop view of Alice Springs. The view was fantastic and on the way back down I lead Mand cross country just to spice things up a bit. She loved it...and don’t let her tell you otherwise. But on the way up I did gain a little bit more of an insight into Aboriginal culture. Sad as it is this is the first time I’ve taken a genuine interest in their religion or their culture. Oops. But better late than never I suppose. Now the Aboriginals believe that in the beginning (to coin a phrase) spirit beings inhabited a formless Earth. In fact, f*** it I’m just going to write what was written on the board.‘These spirit beings often looked like plants and left a record of their activities in the hills, trees, rivers and so on that they made along the way as they travelled. Aboriginal people regard these spirits as the ancestors of all forms of life, and believe that the power still exists in the landscape. As a result deep religious meaning is given to the places associated with the deeds of their spirit ancestors.’This is why there is such a strong spiritual relationship between the Aborigines and the land. In the Alice Springs area all of the landforms were created by spirit beings. Most of it was the work of three groups of caterpillars. The local indigenous people (the Arrernte) believe they are descended from these caterpillars. And that’s it. I did say it was only a little bit. I guess it means that the entire Earth is their church. The hippie in me loves it. Not enough to want to buy any of their s***ty art though.

We spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon doing Internet stuff and then headed out to see the Spring from which Alice Springs get its name. It’s not actually a spring. It’s just a big sandy hole in the ground. The guy who discovered it (W W Someoneorother) was scoping out for the telegraph company and when he arrived it had been raining hard. The ‘Spring’ is actually a load of sand sitting on granite, so the water can’t drain away. Either way he named it after the Superintendent of telegraph’s wife. Alice. And that’s about it. To be fair we feel a little like we’ve wasted our time here in Alice and didn’t really get to see the best of it. But what the hey, tomorrow we’re off to Uluru for sunset, a base walk, a ‘tour’ of the night sky, sunrise, breakfast and Aboriginal demonstrations. We cannae wait mon.

Laters all

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