Just about in the geographical centre of Australia and located in the heart of the Red Centre, Alice Springs is a vibrant modern town with a thriving population of 28,000 people. It was made famous by the Neville Shute 1950’s novel ‘A Town Like Alice’,
In modern days, Alice Springs has evolved into a modern Outback Town, with all the creature comforts of a capital city. It has almost everything that you may need, with international standard accommodation at all levels. There are plenty of shops, from air-conditioned plazas to unique boutiques. Restaurants vary from fast food chains to five star dining.
This area of Australia is part of the territory of the Arrernte people and is known by the local names of Arrende, Yeperenye, or Mparntwe – and is connected with the caterpillar dreaming. The aboriginal presence in Alice Springs is strong and they can be seen everywhere around the town. I don’t know the reason, but they all seem to shout angrily at each other.
We left town driving south through Heavitree Gap where the road, railway line and Todd River squeeze through a narrow gap in the McDonnell Range.
We had a journey of around 400 kilometres to get to our overnight destination at Marla, just over the border into South Australia. If we thought that there were long distances and remoteness in the Northern Territory, we found that the area through which we traveled today is positively desolate. There were nothing but a few remote roadhouses.
I can summarise our travel into three broad stages.
The first of these was the first hundred kilometres south of Alice Springs. The hills and flat topped mountains was very scenic and reminded us of our travels through Arizona in USA.
In the second part, we found very red soil, rocky outcrops and sand hills. It’s no wonder that we call this the ‘Red Cente’.
The third section (the last 250 kms) came straight out of the first line of Dorothea Mackellar’s poem ‘My Country’ where she wrote ‘ I love a sunburned country, a land of sweeping plains. Well, these plains swept as far as the eye could see, and further. Miles and Miles of flat coungtry with absolutely nothing apart from the occassional track leaving the highway to a remote cattle station. The only relief from boredom was the occassional curve in the road.
We stopped for a cup of coffee at a place where the road crossed the Finke River. Of course, it was as dry as sawdust (sand). The River Red Gums along the waterway develop quite a bit of character as they age and the one in the wayside stop was no exception.
A little way down the road, we came to one of the three roadhouses along the highway. These were the only signs of habitation. They are all built on the site of artesian wells for their water supply. The one at Stuart Wells also had a camel farm.
The second roadhouse at Kulgera was a combined roadhouse, pub and service station. It sported a clothesline with hundreds of donated shoes. We bought some sandwiches for lunch which we ate in the car as we couldn’t find anywhere with shade around the roadhouse. We should have driven a few more kilometres to the SA / NT border where there was a large and tidy stopping place with shade trees and shelters.
We seem to have left the unusually hot weather behind. The temperture was a delightful 26C – a far cry from the hot 38C tempertures that we experienced further north. That extrreme temperature was very unusual seeing that it was still winter. It has now just become spring. The worst thing about the environment here is that we seem to now be in ‘fly country’. These little bush flies come in squadrons and get in your eyes, ears and mouth. So annoying! It takes a few minutes drive after every stop with the windows open to blow them out of the car.
Just over the SA border we misssed a road that turned off to the exact centre of Australia. We wouldn’t have had time to travel to the ‘parliament house’ style structure that marks the place anyway, so we can only say that we were around the very centre of the continent.
Our overnight stop was at the third roadhouse on our route for the day. This one at Marla is located on the highway near the junction of the road to Oodnadatta. It is a large facility with a service station, caravan park, motel accommodation, supermarket, bar and cafe. The cafe had an extensive menu of only four varieties of hamburger although the special for Monday night was ‘Beef Cordon Bleu’.
I didn’t have many high expectations form this place but we had a very comfortable night and were well fed and watered.
