Alice Springs

We rolled into Alice Springs and I was pretty knackered after 9 early mornings and 10 late nights! After the traditional end of tour shebang the night we got there I managed to rise at a not too unreasonable hour of the morning. Most of the people from tour were heading out on further tour segments, North to Darwin or South to Adelaide. Naya, Frank and Me were hanging around another day though (in fact I had 4 days to kill in Alice, not such an easy task!). So we had a wander around together, and managed to see a lot of Alice without actually finding the reasonably nice main street, we did see some 2nd hand shops and book shops, and climbed up the Anzac hill for a view of the town, there we happened to bump into Edi and Ali, the 70+ Swiss-German couple, again.

The 3 of us cooked dinner in the hostel and then headed out to buy a few beers. On the way back we had a bit of an depressing encounter with some Aborigines, which I'd rather not dwell on.
Anyway, we made it back to the hostel and had some last good times, great times.

The next day I spent the morning catching up on some much needed sleep, and most of the afternoon on the Internet and doing a little shopping. I was pleasantly surprised that some girl gave me a free beer while I was just sitting having my tea! on the third day I went to the cultural plaza, where they had various museums including Art, Geology and aviation, and a quite interesting graveyard (neatly divided into sections by religion of course) including the graves of Lassiter and Albert Namitrija (the first Aboriginal to get Australian Citizenship - to visit the queen). Then after lunch I went to a free didgeridoo workshop, where various terrible farty noises were made, before doing a little more shopping (warmer clothes for Tasmania) and going to the flying doctor centre. On my final day I had to head to the airport in the afternoon, and in the morning I again went shopping, and may have accidentally (or deliberately) spent lots of money on a nice didgeridoo!! I had to get the airport bus much earlier than my flight was due to leave, which is just as well, as it turned out my flight had changed and had already gone in the morning. Thankfully they rebooked me on a flight to Sydney and then from their to Melbourne, meaning after an uncomfortable night in Melbourne airport I got my flight to Hobart in Tasmania early the next morning as planned.