Still Alice Springs

Dave is still amazed that Alice Springs is in the mountains, rather than out in the middle of the flat desert, as in his mind picture. We are all amazed at the amount of rain there's been since we came here (as are the Alice residents, since this is "the dry").

We did a half day trip of the West MacDonnell Ranges - the mountains directly beside Alice Springs. Our first stop was on Anzac Hill right in Alice Springs (where there is a memorial to the Australia New Zealand Army Corps, and a good view of surrounding mountains). Our next stop was at Flynn's Grave, the memorial to the founder of the flying doctor. At this point it was bucketing down rain and we only went as far as the picnic shelter where we huddled while we listened to the guide.

Then on a bit to Simpsons Gap, where we walked up the (usually dry) riverbed to the water hole in the Gap. This gap was the usual made by a river gap. For this walk we still used umbrellas issued by the guide but the rain was not so hard, so it was quite pleasant.

Next we stopped at Standley Chasm (photo of Sean there). This chasm was your mountains split apart gap, however today, even though it had finally quit raining, there was water flowing through the rocks. Dave was amazed that the walk marked "easy" required clambering over boulders and through streams. It was actually quite a lovely walk, and we saw cycads (prehistoric plants) and gums and other cool vegetation, as well as a lot of rocks.

Then the tour fed us lunch and brought us back to our hotel about 1 pm - the causeway through the river had deeper water than yesterday, but was still open. We went to downtown Alice Springs, first to try the free internet at MacDonalds (not successful), then to look at an Art Gallery cum Aboriginal Art & Culture museum. Quite interesting. I love some of the art, but my favorite stuff is very expensive (Dave's favorite is in the permanent collectin at the museum) - I'm still looking for something I like that is less costly. It is easily transported as they just sell it unstretched, and roll it up in a cylinder.

That was our last full day in Alice Springs.