More of the Red Center

Wednesday morning, May 16, we continue up the Stuart towards Alice Springs. The scenery remains red desert. There is almost nothing between Erlunda and Alice Springs.

The Alice Springs is easy to find and busy with people. We decide on the G'Day, Mate Tourist Park, and it's pretty easy to find. It doesn't seem to be in the nicest part of town, though there are other parks nearby as well. There are aboriginal people hanging out on the street and in the parking lot of the convenience store near the park. The park has a gate and a key card; if we are going anywhere we will need the keycard to get back in after 7 pm. The park is pretty full, with lots of rugged looking rigs. These are serious all-terrain vehicles. We are definitely in the Outback!

serious vehicle

Olivier, who we had met near the end of our stay at Permaculture Gold Coast, lives in Alice Springs. Shawn had been keeping in touch with him via Facebook. Since we don't have a phone, Shawn called him via Skype to let him know we had arrived in town.  We set up the little tent, and drove back into town to get groceries and supplies.

Downtown is pretty nice, with a major pedestrian mall. As we found in many Australian cites and towns, there is often a saddle shop right on the main drag. This one has racing and stockhorse stuff primarily. (I am still kicking myself for not getting the gray "chromed leather" halter with the Aussie buckle nose!)

Gotta love a big plastic horse downtown!

We managed to find a grocery store and a K-Mart of all places, and picked up some food and a nice little frying pan for $5, as well as plates and a couple cooking utensils. When we got back to the park, we put the perishables in the camp fridge and met up with Oliver, who wanted to show us a place with "good cheap food." He drove us to "Annie's", a backpacker hostel and bar/restaurant. The signage wasn't obvious, and we had to walk down some alley-like hallways to get there, but wow, the place was great. And Olive was right about the decent prices for food and beer! We had the burger special, with a Coopers Pale for me and a cider for Shawn. The place reminded me a little of the Rathskeller or a cool university hangout. We sat and talked with Oliver for quite a while-- what an interesting guy he is. His French accent makes his stories just that much more fun I think. And he has some interesting stories...

Not exactly "cheap" beer, but reasonable, and good.

Horror travel headline collection

 Oliver spent a lot of time leading tours in Australia, so he had a lot of advice on where to go and what to see. He also told us of a "Permablitz" happening in Alice Springs on the coming Saturday. A Permablitz is when a bunch of permaculturists/gardeners gather at one person's house and do a bunch of work. In an organized group setting, usually if you participate in a couple of these work days, then you are entitled to have one at your place. The place hosting sounded very interesting, and we were kind of excited at the possibility of seeing more permaculture in action, so we decided to configure our sightseeing around Alice in order to fit this in.

Oliver dropped us back at the park, and on our way back to our campsite, we ran into a couple near the kitchen. They were friendly and outgoing, and tried to get us to come over and have drinks with them but we were well and truly dead on our feet. I would have loved to have the energy though-- he was Australian, and  it turns out she was Bavarian! Hearing her accent made me miss Andrea quite a bit. :) Thomas and Claudia... they were heading in the same direction as us, but on a slightly different time schedule. But you never know-- it seems like the travelers end up in a group due to the remoteness of stops along the single long road running N-S through the Outback...

Our new plan was to drive west, to the "West McDonnell Range" on Thursday, and return to Alice Springs Friday night in order to participate in the permablitz. It amounted to some extra camp-breaking and setting up, but things would work ok, and we were pretty good at setting and breaking camp by now anyway.