Friday 26 - Sunday 28 September 2014

Australia 2014 - (9) Alice Springs

Unlike the day before which had been freezing, it was a good ride up from Kulgera to Alice Springs – sunny but not too hot and best of all, no wind.

Alice Springs sits at about 600 m (2000 ft) so the road was slowly rising again. Bland bush gave way to rugged hilly outcrops and the earth became redder.

I arrived in Alice about 12.30 pm and went straight over to Dave and Cec’s place. Dave was one of the guys I’d met on the Postie Bike Challenge who had very kindly offered me a place to stay. It was great to see him again and meet his wife Cec. That evening they took me up to Anzac Hill to watch the sunset which gave great views of the town and the general lie of the land.

The next day Dave took me on a tour of the local surroundings. We stopped at the Transport Museum to see how much it would cost to get in should I want to go back myself, then the Uterne Solar Power Station – a mass of solar panels which Dave advised is due to be quadrupled in size over the next few years.

Alice Springs is surrounded by the McDonnell Ranges to the east and west, so next we headed out of town to Honeymoon gap, a place where the limestone ranges were carved through by ancient rivers when the continent was still forming. Today the river was dry but still flows in times of heavy rain. Next stop was Simpson Gap, another place where a gap has been formed by erosion. There was a group of rock wallabies at the foot of the cliffs – alas they were too quick and too far away for me to catch any photos.

After that we went back to Dave’s and collected Cec and went out to the Ellery Creek Big Hole, a gorgeous permanent swimming hole 88 km out of town. A swim and some lunch later we headed back into Alice to the old Telegraph Station. This is the only remaining original telegraph station of the Overland Telegraph Line (O/T Line) that ran from Darwin to Adelaide and connected Australia with the rest of the world via the subsea cable from Asia.

Not content with what had already been a pretty busy day by my standards, Dave and Cec then took me out to some claypans just out of town for a BBQ. I could barely keep my eyes open by the time we got home.

On Sunday, Dave and Cec had other commitments so I took myself off to explore the city. I had been there back in 1989 but it was too long ago for me to remember anything much. After a morning of wandering around the shops and the Sunday craft market, I took a tour of the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) museum. The RFDS is another amazing service that has developed to to service the people living in remote Australia. From humble beginnings back in 1928 it now has 61 aircraft and 21 bases across the country meaning no-one is ever more than 2 hours from a major hospital.