Alice Springs was an excellent stop. I was expecting a real country town, but I was totally wrong, it's quite modern, no doubt due to all the tourism. Alice Springs has a large community of Aboriginal people, the Arenette people, and I decided that Alice would be a good place to learn more about the Aboriginal people. Unfortunately I have heard a lot of racist red neck comments on my travels from Australians so I wanted to see the other side. We decided to do a tour, and we went with RT Tours on a trip to the old Telegraph station and Simpsons gap in the West Macdonnel Ranges. Our guide Bob gave us so much insightful info into the Aboriginal culture. Bob is Australian aboriginal and was removed from his family aged 8 to go to a Christian missionary, as many "half castes" as they said at the time, were. Here he was taught a basic eductaion. So Bob has strong links with both cultures and explained some of the problems that have arisen when the 2 cultures thousands of years old are brought together. Many people live in the town camps which is aboriginal land, many living off welfare. Many come to Alice for health and benefits. There are about 7000 Aboriginals in Alice. I was told that Alice has the highest murder rate in OZ! There are a lot of domestic violence problems in the aboriginal communities, alcohol and substance abuse are blamed for this. Unfortunately we saw examples of this ourselves. They only have Opal fuel in many places in the outback too, as this fuel cannot be used to get high, another major problem. But it isn't all like this. It wasn't that long ago that Aboriginals were killed in prisons, given rations for working on farms, and had no rights!We learnt about the culture and laws. In this area they have the Catapillar dreaming, it relates to their ancestors and how the land was made. Although we couldn't be told the whole story. In Aboriginal culture when someone dies they were not buried, in old times, they would have been left by a tree, to die in peace and after this their name is not mentioned again. If you committed murder you yourself would be punished by death and other crimes were punished by being speared in the leg. Obviously these laws don't really fit in with todays government laws. They aren't really any people in the area now who hunt for food, and eat the bush tucker as a main source of food. I was told this probably finished on 1986, and in this time the landscape has changed dramatically. A main part of Aboriginal way of life was hunting and gathering food, and now this had all changed, in modern day Alice Springs food is bought from shops. The culture and ceremonies are still practised. There is lots of art in Alice too. Our guides father is a famous artist, and we got to see some of his paintings, apparently one of these is in the museum in South Oz, in Adelaide. He is a famous water colour artist and I think he follows in the same school of art as the very famous Albert Namatjiri he formed an art school in the community of Hermannsburg. This trip was fantastic, I've really wanted to understand the Aboriginal way of life, past and present and this is exactly what we got. We also got to try bush oranges, passion fruit pulled from the tree, and many medicinal trees and plants were shown to us. And we tried a nice bit of Roo, actually quite tasty, but I did feel a bit guilty when I saw the little things hopping around! Ahhh.We took a trip to the East Macdonnell ranges at Trephina gorge. We walked around the gorge (scorching!) and then had a dip in the cool water at the bottom (no crocs!). We built a camp fire. It was beautiful there. There is so much to do around Alice Springs. With the East and West ranges. There is more green and water than you think. Chris went quad biking on a cattle station in the outback, and loved it. We started our trip to Darwin, stopping off at Mantaranka on the way. We went to Berry Springs in Elsey National park. The hot springs were crystal clear blue waters, and it didn't look like it could possibly be natural, a true mini paradise! Chris and I were in there for 2 hours as we were talking to everyone in there. Although I'm glad we found out after we had let the current take us around the 120 m track of water that is allowed for swimming, that crocs could possibly be in this area. And Chris thought he saw a snake in the water! Huge garden spiders made webs from one side of the spring to the other, and we could see them sitting in their webs above our heads.