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Published: March 24th 2010
We've had two wonderful days in Alice Springs. As in Uluru, there were thousands of lakes and green pastures to be seen from the plane. Last week Alice had a rainfall of 12 inches, more than it normally gets in four years!
Alice is a small town but not as small as we expected. The downtown area is about five blocks wide but the town stretches out for at least a couple of kilometers from there. We've done a lot of walking which had to be done carefully in the 32C heat. Today we walked out to the golf course. It was pretty nice and Barry got himself a golf shirt. Our hotel is really nice and has a great pool.
Last night we went to an Original Outback Bush Barbeque. We were put together with 42 people from a coach tour. They'd all been together for two weeks and knew each other well so we felt a bit out of place. But everybody welcomed us and we all had a great time. We saw our first kangaroos on the way to the BBQ site. One small grey one and a larger red Roo were feeding on the green grass. A (really) handsome young cowboy demonstrated boomerang throwing then cooked us amazingly good steaks and damper over the fire. Another cowboy told us more about the aboriginal people. A third fellow serenaded us with campfire songs. We were lucky, it started to rain for a while but stopped before we were done. We were warned ahead of time that frogs live in the water at the bottom of the toilets. One lady looked and, sure enough, they do. Not many women used the toilets!
And today we had another adventure - we went for a camel ride! We were picked up by a cowboy who drove like a bat out of hell. We had visions of our last day on earth being spent heading for a camel ride and how silly would that sound in our obituaries? We shared a camel called Hannah. Ten camels were tied closely together, one behind the other, and off we went. We laughed ourselves silly because the people in front of us wanted us to take a picture of them. If you've ever been on one you'll know that camels don't walk level. Everytime I tried to take a picture I'd lurch and get a shot of the sky. The most exciting part of it all was the camel getting up and then kneeling down again with us on her back. It was a lot of fun.
Most of you know our wonderful friend and neighbour, Glenna. Barry and I kidnapped one of her stuffed animals, an owl. We brought Oliver Owl with us and we've been having fun taking pictures of him having adventures. He was in Barry's pocket when we rode the camel.
Tomorrow at noon we're boarding the Ghan train for the 24-hour trip south through the Outback to Adelaide. Barry has been wanting to take a train trip since he was 18 and went across Canada by train to join the Navy.
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jaye
non-member comment
Greetings
Hi Noreen and Barry - sounds like you're having fun and it's great to travel with you! Don's off in Maryland for a week and then to Halifax for two. Heather was on the Island this past weekend doing some research so I got to see her a bit! In the wind last week, a tree toppled and landed on Heather and Jay's storage shed - broke through the roof! I'm assuming that when I fill in this comment box, that the message is going to you! Connors head for Hawaii today. Keep on having a wonderful time. Jaye