After a day at Kings Canyon and its spectacular landscape, we headed to Alice Springs. There's a short cut on poor dirt roads or the long way around via the Lasseter Highway. Alas, the latter trip was about 400 km but all the roads were sealed and again the desert scenery was often riveting. By the way, Lasseter became famous in 1931 when he proclaimed he had found a fabulously rich gold deposit in Central Australia and he died two years later supposedly looking for it. No-one has subsequently found this reef, so maybe you can become rich by proving its existence!
Though the journey was long we broke it at a few places - mainly look-outs and petrol stations, which also doubled up as restaurants / coffee houses. The trip had a bit of everything. Wildlife, historical association, scenery, and so on. We start with a tame sulphur-crested cockatoo - similar to the ones found occasionally in Armidale.
At one stop there was a farm which had both cattle and camels. The baby camel shown here seemed pretty tame. Despite Australia having the second largest herd of wild camels in the world, after the Sudan, and a growing export industry supplying camel milk and meat to the middle east, we actually saw very camels on our trip ... but they're around!
Here's Mount Conner, a mesa-like structure isolated in the desert, first from a distance and then from a viewing spot along the Lasseter highway driving east to join the Stuart Highway which runs something like 3000 km (1875 miles) from Adelaide to Darwin
When we reached the Lasseter highway we came across some amazing vegetation - a Vegemite tree. Vegemite is Australia's answer to the English Marmite, only tasting better. And here was a tree growing Vegemite jars and tubes.
Nearby Bec and Max found a large road sign announcing the Red Centre Way (i.e. Lasseter Highway) to Uluru. And Bec in particular jumped for joy.
The rest of these pictures sows a desert city with most of the services one would expect for a town its size and importance. It's the third largest place in the Northern Territory.
Our accommodation and the city proved a great base for further exploration of the red centre. By the way, the dominant red colour of the landscape comes from the oxidisation of iron particles in rocks and soils.
AS
Though the journey was long we broke it at a few places - mainly look-outs and petrol stations, which also doubled up as restaurants / coffee houses. The trip had a bit of everything. Wildlife, historical association, scenery, and so on. We start with a tame sulphur-crested cockatoo - similar to the ones found occasionally in Armidale.
At one stop there was a farm which had both cattle and camels. The baby camel shown here seemed pretty tame. Despite Australia having the second largest herd of wild camels in the world, after the Sudan, and a growing export industry supplying camel milk and meat to the middle east, we actually saw very camels on our trip ... but they're around!
Here's Mount Conner, a mesa-like structure isolated in the desert, first from a distance and then from a viewing spot along the Lasseter highway driving east to join the Stuart Highway which runs something like 3000 km (1875 miles) from Adelaide to Darwin
When we reached the Lasseter highway we came across some amazing vegetation - a Vegemite tree. Vegemite is Australia's answer to the English Marmite, only tasting better. And here was a tree growing Vegemite jars and tubes.
Nearby Bec and Max found a large road sign announcing the Red Centre Way (i.e. Lasseter Highway) to Uluru. And Bec in particular jumped for joy.
We stopped at another roadhouse en route to the Alice. And, after we arrived and found our accommodation, we visited the Lookout, which honours Australia's war-time combat, to survey the town from aloft.
Here's the view south to the gap in the McDonnell Ranges through which the train and road from Adelaide to Darwin both pass. By the way, the population of the Alice (aka Stuart and Alice Springs) is just a little larger than Armidale's at about 28,000 people.
The rest of these pictures sows a desert city with most of the services one would expect for a town its size and importance. It's the third largest place in the Northern Territory.
Our accommodation and the city proved a great base for further exploration of the red centre. By the way, the dominant red colour of the landscape comes from the oxidisation of iron particles in rocks and soils.
AS
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