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Published: November 17th 2009
Getting a bit slack with the travelblog entries! Time's flying by, we can't believe we've been living in Alice Springs now for nearly 7 months.
Mention Alice to people outside here and you normally get one of two reactions. Either you get told what a shithole it is and how you'll be stabbed, turned mad by flies and burn to a crisp, before finding out that the person you're talking to hasn't even been here. Or the reaction will be one of suprised enthusiasm for the town from someone who actually has taken the trouble to travel here. We've never been somewhere where so many people have turned up for a few weeks to work, and ended up staying for years. We keep wondering whether our enthusiasm will wear out, but it certainly hasn't yet, we both love it here.
Claire's changed jobs and is now working in public health. One major part of her job is dealing with trachoma, the eye disease eradicated from every single first-world country apart from Australia. Some of the aboriginal communities here have massively high infection rates and its almost unbelievable that in 2009 people are still being blinded by a disease thats
been known about since Egyptian times. At the moment Claire's over 1000km away at a community just 50km from the Gulf of Carpentaria where she's treating people out the back of a car. She'll be back in a couple of days. Its hard to imagine how different this job must be for her compared to the nursing she'd be doing if we were still living in the UK.
I'm still working for the fruit and veg wholesaler here in town, making up packs mainly for aboriginal communities right across central Australia. Pretty different to jobs I've done before and its nice to not be responsible for other people's lives for pretty much the first time since I left school, but I'm quite enjoying it and certainly have no plans to look elsewhere at the moment.
We've had some more visitors since Clive and Vanessa left us. Pete and Nirbeeja that we met along the Nullabor last year have arrived and settled in for a few months. They're working their way around Australia and will probably stay until the weather starts cooling down up north. Not really expecting to find much of interest around Alice they've been amazed by
Jemma
Ormiston Gorgethe varied landscapes within a few hours drive of here, and I think if the top end wasn't drawing them so much would be content to stay much longer.
Claire's best mate Jemma stayed a couple of weeks, and we took her out the West MacDonnell range for a few days camping and showed her round the town. Made the most of the fantastic swimming holes at Ellery Big Hole and Glen Helen. She'd previously stayed here pretty much overnight on the way to the rock a few years ago, and then hadn't really taken to the town, so it was our opportunity to show here whats keeping us in here.
With Jemma and our friends Nicci and Darren, we chartered a light plane and flew down to Uluru for the day. Absolutely stunning scenary all the way there and back, the varied landscape was breathtaking. Didn't get a lot of time down there but hired a car for a whistlestop tour of Uluru and Kata Tjuta.
Been pretty hectic socially with Nicci and Darren, and her mum and dad Dot and Pete who live about 100km out into the bush, so we've been out there a
couple of times to see them and swim in their pool, pretty bizarre so far out in the middle of nowhere! Making the most of our swimming pool at home as well, especially now the temperatures over 40 most days.
Clive and Vanessa enjoyed their stay here so much they booked straight away to come back. They get here next week.
Sorry, pretty brief travelblog this time, but lots of pics. Sorry they're not in very good order!
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Roisin Loughlin
non-member comment
Hello! Really sounds like you guys have found your feet in "the alice". Keep having a ball! So good to hear that with both your jobs you're putting something back into the aboriginal community. Such a different working enviroment for claire! Brilliant work, so worthwhile. Aw would love to make it back out to that magical part of the world again someday. Maybe when the wee man is older we'll pass your way! Anyways look forward to hearing more of your tales. Take care xo