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Published: February 27th 2011
Our penultimate day with the campervan started on a rather dismal note when we woke up and realised that someone had gotten into the campervan during the night and taken about $20 from our wallet. Luckily, I suppose, the cards were all left as was the camera, satnav and Ipod all sitting in the glove compartment. Having checked almost daily since then it appears that none of the cards have been used so it could have been a lot worse.
In an attempt to improve our day somewhat we set out to have a good explore around Alice Springs. This had a lot to do with our desire to take a positive out of the day and nothing to do with burning off some of the large fried breakfast we had just made in the campervan,
Alice Springs can only be described as a very odd place. Seemingly a large town set in the middle of pretty much nowhere, the entire area was, at times literally, covered by Aborigines who seemingly did nothing all day but wait until they could buy alcohol. They were not helped in their efforts by the towns bizarre licensing laws which prevented all alcohol
being sold anywhere before midday at which point you still couldn't buy any strong drinks until much later in the afternoon.
We did a mixture of two walking tours during the morning, the one in our guide book and the one suggested by a local handout. This meant that we were able to see the outside of most of the local tourist spots which all seemed to be closed due to a shortage of volunteers during the summer. Having spoken to other people in the Outback regions it appears a lot of local people leave the area during the summer and go somewhere much cooler instead.
Slightly disappointed by the walking tour we headed off in the afternoon to the Desert Sands park. This was a large wildlife and animal center just outside Alice Springs. The park was split into the three different types of climate that can be found naturally around the Outback with all the local wildlife and plant life they would naturally contain. We had a really good time there and I would recommend it to anyone who was traveling to the Alice Springs area. My favourite parts were either the Kangaroo enclosure where you
got to walk into the enclosure with the animal only a few feet away, or the nocturnal park where you saw the greatest variety of animal life and learnt about all the work that the park was involved in.
After a pretty exciting, and exhausting, afternoon in the Park we headed back to the campsite, stopping off for a cheeky milkshake along the way, in order to start packing everything up for when we had to hand over the campervan.
What follows is, to date, one of the most boring days we have ever had in a foreign country. All that was largely achieved was the handing back of the Campervan, traveling to Brisbane and, sleeping in a hostel. Along the way we were able to learn why large sections of the Aborigines do very little, as they receive state benefits and royalites for the Government renting back the land from the Aborigines. We also managed to cross forwards and backwards between multiple time zones as the Australians have an inability to agree on what time it is in their country, which was very confusing. Granted it is very large but they could at least agree on whether
or not they would have summer time saving.
Our day in Brisbane was a mixture of stocking up on a few items that we would need for the day's ahead on the boat and having a good explore of the city. It was very tiring but ultimately we were able to cover a large amount of the centre of the city in a short time. Steph made her most shocking discovery of the trip to date, namely that buildings aren't designed to be photographed, and moaned that the Town Hall building would not all fit in one photo when taken from the square in front of it.
What was quite surprising as we walked around was that there was very little evidence of the recent flooding in Brisbane. A few of the parks close to the waterfront were still closed but most of the City Centre was up and running normally. The only vivid reminder was the river through Brisbane, which was still running brown due to all the mud and silt that was flowing into it.
On our final day in Australia we headed over to the port of Brisbane in order to board the
Brisbane traffic signal box
In order to brighten up the city they've painted lots of the traffic signal boxes and this was one we particularly liked! MSC Palermo, the cargo ship that will take us to Singapore. It was a bit of a mission to get to the docks, which required a mixture of train and taxi due to the lack of a bus service on Sunday. It is quite odd to think that we will be in Singapore in two weeks time and that this is not the end of adventure, or in fact anywhere close. It is also odd as we have probably the largest and nicest room we will have in some time.
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Andy
non-member comment
Goo-day!
Hello you two - heading off around the world without saying goodbye. How rude! Sounds like you are having the experience of a lifetime :) I'm about to head off to sleep here but will enjoy reading about your adventures when the weekend comes in a while. Take care of yourselves and your wallets!! Big love, Andy x