Today I declared a rest and washing day. We decided after a few days of touristy stuff and walking heaps we needed a breather, so only walked into town to wander up Anzac Hill and check the view over the town. Alice Springs isn’t very big with just a couple of little shopping malls in the centre of town with the usual assortment of souvenir places and specialty shops. I have only spotted one pub and two bottle shops and there are quite strict guidelines to purchase alcohol, you need to show photo id and it’s only available for purchase at certain times of the day.

Central Alice from Anzac Hill

West MacDonnells in the distance from Anzac Hill

I’m really not sure what to make of the indigenous conditions in Alice, they seem quite impoverished to me but maybe that’s just the way they are?? I wouldn’t feel comfortable at all walking around here at night and am glad the caravan park has huge locked gates that shut at 8pm. This is our last night in Alice and I won’t be sad to go it’s a bit rough around the edges and I’m over the sirens all night!!

On a nicer note I made some date scones for arvo tea, nothing special about that you might think but we don’t have an oven in the camper so I experimented with the little Coleman camp oven we bought just for the trip. It’s a little tin box that packs away flat and you open it up and sit it on a gas cooker till it heats up and dada an oven, except our little gas cooker didn’t get hot enough and it was nearly an epic fail until I noticed the big gas burner in the camp kitchen so wacked a $1 in the tin and cooked them on that in no time at all. The French girl next to us (she lives here in her tent paying $245 a week and working during the day) was amazed by it, think she was going to go find one. anyway they were yummy and looked like this;

We are off to Chambers Pillar tomorrow for a night of solitude in the desert. The pillar has caught Col’s attention so we are off to investigate, 3 hours of rough sandy corrugated road, should be fun! No phone coverage out there so blog will be away for a couple of days. Have to cross a sand dune with the camper on, that could be interesting? If we get bogged to the axles we can just open it out and wait for a snatch out the next day or the day after or the day after that….

PS: short sleaves today and less wind, it was quite pleasant. Expecting mid 20’s for the next week.