So, What’s it Really Like in the Middle of Australia?

Well, how can I put this? There’s not much about.

Today I want to wrap up my adventures in the middle of Australia with this final report. I have already quite comprehensively covered Uluru so now, here’s the other stuff. Pretty much slap bang in the middle is the one large town, Alice Springs. And, by and large, this is Alice Springs in its entirety as viewed from a rather large hill that we climbed up.

Most of the roads in the area look something like this……

And you can drive for miles without seeing anything. But there are quite a few “local” attractions. For example, we visited this place called Standley Chasm, it was about an hour’s drive from Alice Springs and for seven dollars you could park up and take a 20 minute walk to the view the chasm. It is best viewed at midday when the sun hits it.

When you have finished your walk and returned to the car park, there’s a small gift shop and a nice little cafe serving food and drink. I couldn’t help wondering what a strange lifestyle it was for the owners though. If they run out of milk they have a two hour round trip to Alice Springs. And not another town in driving distance.

The Ochre Pit about another half hour down the road was worth a look too……

Ochre being the yellow brown or reddish earth pigment used by the aboriginals for painting and I believe protection from the sun. Don’t take any away from this pit though; you’ll get fined up to $5000. It belongs to the aboriginals.

Then there was the gorge at Glen Helen which is where you will also find one of the nine watering holes in the area fed by the Finke River. Without these, central Australia might well be very much different than it is today.

Much of the countryside looks like this…..

And on some evenings the sky can change colour several times in the space of 20 minutes, like this….

Did I see any creepy crawlies in central Australia?

No, but I saw a strange and colourful grub, if it was a grub. I have no idea….

Then, what you and I would almost certainly call a mouse, but may have been a Spinifex, sometimes described as a hopping mouse that I believe is actually a marsupial and not a mouse at all. On the other hand, it could have been a vole. Again I just don’t know.

Apparently, central Australia is overrun with wild camels and in certain areas they are causing havoc. I was lucky enough to see some on the horizon…….

And finally, we saw a couple of dingoes. One of them was in the car park near Uluru and he was definitely looking for food. Signs suggested these dingoes could attack at any time and to beware…….

But they didn’t look too tough to me. Take a look at this; it’s a BBC video I found of a dingo attacking a kangaroo. But don’t worry, nobody gets hurt and it’s actually quite funny in the end. It’s more like Skippy meets Lassie….

There! Any questions about Central Australia?