When you leave Alice, you leave the Outback and the desert. When you arrive in Darwin, you hit the tropics. Where Alice weather is hot and dry, Darwin's is hot and very humid! Up here, in the Top End (as it is affectionately known), the seasons are divided into the Big Wet, the Little Wet and the Dry. So when it is not rainy, you know that it will rain some time soon! Ten years ago, Darwin was a place where Croc Dundee characters actually did exist. I was here...

If you are crossing Australia by road, at some point you have to pass through Alice Springs. But if you are coming from the South, you first have to pass through Stuart's Well and there is a trivial pursuit question that asks about a singing dingo and a little place called Stuart's Well's in the geography section. There is, in fact, a singing dingo who lives at Stuart's Well in the Northern Territories, but you will never hear him sing like Pavarotti or Bono thou...

The first inkling of what Ayers Rock-Uluru might look like is actually from a mountain you pass on the way there. Here the country is flat. Dead flat. The only undulations in the landscape are from sand dunes that have been blown hither and thither, so you can see for miles in any direction from the top of one of these dunes and in amongst those dunes are huge large white sun-baked pans. Here is a flat flat landscape with not much to break the monotony, but for t...