Day 117 - Alice Springs - Friday 10th February 2012

We arrived at Cairns airport and checked in and wandered around the airport before our 11.25am flight. The check in guy had told us that the plane would start boarding at 11.05 and come 11.08 we were being called by our full names over the airport loudspeaker to board the plane! Cairns airport is one efficient place! Once on the plane we realised that it was empty, hence the early call we assumed, and sat for the 2 hour flight reading our books and munching on the free lunch and snacks.

We landed, picked up our bags and headed to the sign for our pick up for Haven hostel - our lodgings for the night. Once there, we were greeted by the most sullen looking receptionist we've seen who grunted at us that we were in room 21. We went to the room and chucked our bags down eager to get out and explore the famous Alice Springs.

Well what can I say about Alice Springs……………it's err hot. We strolled around the dust ball of a town and to be honest were not at all enamoured! It lacks any charm and is a mishmash of shopping malls and I hate to say it, drunken aboriginals. We later learned that a high percentage of the aboriginals in town were there as they had been chucked out of their communities for bad behaviour, normally drinking - so in a sense, the town is like meeting point for bad, drunk aboriginal's; like a AA meeting without everyone acknowledging that they have a problem and need to sort it out. It's a great shame really because as a tourist you rarely get to see a proper community of aboriginal's as they are based outside of the cities and do not generally welcome visitors and can be very private about their culture - this means that the only face to face contact you get with aboriginal's is of them loitering around the city street corners, drunk and shouting at each other and anyone else who comes within 5 feet of them. Not surprisingly, many tourists come away with a bad and inaccurate perception of the aboriginal culture.

After seeing Anzac Hill, and then trying to have a look at the very few tourist sights and realising they were closed, we gave up and headed to the local supermarket to buy some food. The most interesting place in Alice seemed to be the sweet and bakery section of the supermarket; subsequently Ad and I spent quite a bit of time examining the cakes and biscuits that would best suit our evening cup of tea!

We walked back to the hostel, ate some food and chatted until a sensible time arrived for us to go to bed. We had a 4am start the next morning so wanted to try and get an early night but when sharing with 8 other people in a dorm, you have to consider that the rest of the dorm probably doesn't want to turn off the lights and go to sleep at 9pm! We decided 11pm was acceptable and settled down to get some kip - however at that very moment a party started just outside our room and carried on until 2am. Tomorrow is going to be a long day………………………..