The Outback

We flew to Alice Springs this morning, it is 3 hours from Sydney on Quantas, smack in the middle of Australia. The land is vast and empty, huge tracts of red and ochre scrub and hills - what they call The Bush. I found out today that Quantas stands for Queensland and Northern Territory Air Service - a piece of Australian trivia.

After landing in Alice we picked up our 4WD vehicle and after a brief exploration of Alice (not much to see - a small town with a frontier feel) and a great lunch ( Kangaroo and beet salad - seared, it tastes like very tender beef, wonderful) we headed east into the McConnell Range, a long range of red rock mountains, and we stopped to view the dry stream beds which flood in the summer rains, and the ochre pits, an important site for the aborigines, where white clay and iron oxide (rust!) have combined to form multi hued formations of colored ochre cliff faces.

We are spending the night at Glen Helen Gorge, camping out at the Glen Helen Lodge, which offers dinner and internet, and a cold beer after a day on the road.

I have the impression we are heading into the real Australia, a land of vast empty space, spectacular vistas, and the raw power of nature. The vastness is a lesson in humility, man pales into insignificance.

A happy note form dinner - after every meal Wes and I flip a coin to see who pays - until today I had lost 6 in a row - that's lunch and dinner every day we have been here. Tonight, at the Glen Helen Gorge Lodge (rustic, yet functional, and we are camping) my luck changed - Wes paid for my roo (my second roo today)- happy days are here again.

The internet here is not fast enough to post pictures, so I will post them when I can.