A Town Like Alice....

Except we went to the real place, Alice Springs.

'Interesting Fact : For those of you who have read Neville Shute's book titled as above, the movie adaptation of it was filmed in Silverton!'

We set off on Friday at 5:15pm from Adelaide Station on the legendary Ghan, set to arrive in Alice at 11:55am the following day. We were obviously seated in the cheapy section but it wasn't too bad, they were far more roomy than on a plane and while no replacement for a bed, do allow you to stretch out and get a bit of sleep. We spent the evening in the lounge car having a few tinnies ($5 for a 375ml tin, dissapointingly expensive!) and chatting to some of our fellow travellers. We met a couple of banana benders (Queenslanders), a croweater (South Australian), a sand groper (Western Australian) and some top enders returning home. It was nice to meet a few natives instead of chatting to people from England again.

We arrived in Alice on time and stepped of the air conditioned Ghan, which was cold enough to warrant a jumper at times, into 34 oC heat - this came as a bit of a shock to the system. We were only in Alice for three days so we organised a day tour out to Uluru (Ayers Rock) for the following day which set off at 6am. After fitful sleep on the train the night before this seemed to precipitate an early night. Having learnt our lesson from Melbourne we merely wet our whistles before retiring at around 10pm ready fo a 5am rise for a spot of breakfast.

Ayers Rock is actually about 500km from Alice Springs (my thought is, why don't they move Alice closer, surely it would save money in the long run...!?) so we only made it out there for lunch time. On our coach of 20 people I was the only one who wanted to climb up the rock (wimps!) so at 1:30pm, while everyone else was still sitting around in the air conditioned Cultural Centre, the coach driver dropped me off at the foot of the climb in 34 oC heat. When it gets to 36 oC they actually shut the climb as it's too dangerous, as a result it is shut for around 200 days a year.

I've got to say the climb was pretty tough, you actually have to haul youself up by a chain in parts due to the steepness and there isn't, not surprisngly, any shade. One litre of water, 35 minutes and a few curses later I finally made it to the end of the climb. After reaching what you think is the top, but is actually only about a third of the way, it keeps climbing for a bit before meandering along the top of the rock for about 1km. At one point I thought they were taking the mick and it continued in a continuous loop or something! The climb down was fairly uneventful apart from a couple of slips and being able to geefully inform people climbing up that they till had a long way to go.

Our guide informed me, afterwards of course, that about one person a month dies as a result of climbing Ayers Rock due to heart attacks and others things and about one a year dies from falling off.
It was worth it though and due to being the only person on our coach who climbed it I was awarded minor celebrity or complete idiot status accordingly by everyone else.

We left Alice Spirngs the following day at 4:20pm on the Ghan again, due to arrive in Darwin at 4:30pm the following day.

Stay tuned....