growing up in alice

i've reached civilisation. alice springs has mobile reception so i can upload some pics. this first one is of a mine in coober pedy. see what i mean about the dust? and if you can imagine lots of these mini hills with people's homes cut into them. they always have a door at the side and then they dig into the hill.

all is well and i'm getting back into this travelling lark. i was sat watching telly in coober pedy with my new mates in the telly room (neighbours, family feuds, news, home and away...) when they decided to join me on the star gazing tour. we had a lovely family outing. gary took us out on to something resembling the 'moon plain' and gave us all some binoculars. it was very eery. it was a full moon and so incredibly light that we couldn't see much of the sky. but we cast spectacular moon shadows. it was a bit of a rambling amateurish run through some planets and constellations but he got a telescope out and i saw saturn properly with its rings and everything. that was v exciting. it looks just like its picture. and it was a special environment. you felt like you were on the moon. it was a flat expanse of rocky land with loads of pebbles and rocks and the utmost quiet and all in this eerie light. imagine the coober pic in the moonlight with loads more rocks and no hills. unfortunately, we were with an annoying family with kids that kept talking all the time ('mummy, mummy, is that the star we saw in india?') and the youngest seemed to have adhd. but i successfully managed to ignore them all, including the kid who kept trying to talk to me. i just looked through my binoculars and pretended he wasn't there. i really don't care about being rude anymore. even when the mum asked me if i was travelling to open a conversation, i simply said 'yes' and then went back to looking at the sky. i saw the southern cross, which we never get to see in the northern hemisphere. saw a moving satellite aswell.

and then the ride with the mail man was cool. you got a real sense of the outback. we saw the moon plain again, the dog track (a 5000km fence to keep the dingos out of the south), and many cattle station homesteads in the area. saw proper outback cowboys and they all seemed to be really fit in a seven-brides-for-seven-brothers kind of way. they all looked the same aswell, but it could possibly be because many of them are related. we visited one cattle station, anna creek, that is the size of belgium. we went down the oodnadatta track and followed the old ghan train line, which is now just a mound. felt like my dad, following random non-tracks. the 'road' was an orange dirt track that we powered down in a big tank thing.

we stopped at a billabong, which was amazing because everything around it was so dry. it was 'gibber' country and all was like the moon plain until you suddenly saw a break of greenery and we drove towards it and this billabong unfolded. it was beautiful. such amazing colours in a sea of orange rust. the sunlight seemed really vivid aswell. the outback is really unique. you really get a sense of the geology. peter the postman told us all about the great artesian basin. he didn't half go on, did peter. telling us about everything ever. it was great at first but after 12 hours you kind of switch off. but we passed bridges and the like and i got my fave pic at algebuckina bridge. peter told us the story that one bloke had finished for the day working on the railtrack and desperately wanted to get to the pub. the river was full so, instead of driving round, he put his car on the railtracks to get over the bridge. however, this poor chap miscalculated the train timings and his car got bulldozed off the bridge - he managed to jump out, though. so now there is this picturesque knackered car rusting below the bridge. i like the colours. took the photo above the billabong photo from the bridge and this one up close.

it was great delivering the mail because you got to meet some of the people that live out there at the cattle stations. so isolated. one made tea and cakes for us, including anzac biscuits. and another brought out a joey that she'd found orphaned so she's bringing it up. i got the obligatory photo of me holding the baby kangaroo. it was actually really light. it reminded me a bit of nz, visiting the farms. i think farm people are all the same - they're brought up into it. i just couldn't live somewhere where i was several hours from any other people. literally. i laughed when she said she was going to the city next month and it turned out she was going to some small town in rural victoria.

our lunch break was at oodnadatta (which has become another of my fave words). it's a TINY place, even smaller than coober pedy. but they have a 'famous' pink roadhouse in which we ate. oodnadatta was really interesting. it was where the old ghan line finished until 1927 when they took it up north to alice. apparently, it used to be a really thriving place, with all the afghan camels there that people used to get to go further north before the line extension (hence the name 'ghan' train). but now there are only 500 people living there and three quarters are unemployed. it's amazing that people do still live out here. i mean, it's at least three hours from coober pedy - and that's only coober pedy. i just don't know what they all do out here.

i was in an amusing group of people in the tour, aswell. it struck me to be some agatha christie type of gathering. there was the stylishly coiffeured middle aged american lady who never took her sunglasses off, accompanied by her 90 year old father. there was also a quiet couple and the more argumentative boisterous couple. there was also the middle aged lady on her own and experiencing life for the first time. i half expected someone to die throughout the day and poirot turn up. they were all middle-aged people and seemed strangely fascinated in me and what i was doing cos i was not driving about australia spending my pension like them. but it was a good day out. feel like i've really seen the outback.

and the sunset out there was the most strange and beautiful i've seen. you get a whole rainbow of colours, not just orange and red. i've never seen anything like it. it's purple and pink at the horizon, followed by orange and yellow and then melts into green, light blue and then indigo blue as you get higher into the sky. i tried to get it on the photo. not sure it's come out.

and so now i've made the 4.15am start and got to alice springs. i've seen both the sunrise and the sunset today. i arrived and wandered down the main street to anzac hill, which, it turned out, is the main tourist activity at sunset. you climb the hill and watch the sun set over the mcdonald ranges. it wasn't as spectacular as yesterday's sunset in the desert - this isn't desert country any more - the land transformed from flat expansiveness to hills and everything. i thought i was going to have a peaceful moment but instead it became a really good place to people watch. there were a few couples, a large group of churmans, a couple of middle aged ladies with tripods, looking determined and professional, and a family with a couple of small kids. i was feeling congenial and chatted to the lady about her little girl who was screaming whilst everyone was trying to enjoy the sunset. poor woman. i've been feeling generally quite unusually sociable today, despite being knackered. it didn't start off well. a couple of blokes were getting the same bus as me and, it being 5am, they irritated me intensely before i'd even seen them. i could hear them coming and had already decided that i hated them. and then the guy proved it by cleaning his teeth with his tongue reeeaaaally loudly. he ended up sitting behind me and digged his knees into my back for nine hours. grrrr. but there was a middle aged lady across the way who started chatting and i surprised myself when i discovered that that didn't irritate me. so we chatted away, even though it still really early and dark. it paid off cos she shared her raisin toast with me at 8am and then bought me an ice cream at 11am. i think she was concerned that i wasn't eating. i shared my clementines with her in return. it was a lovely moment. judy was her name.

my life seems to have been dominated by middle aged ladies just recently. but i think i like them better than other backpackers. they're much more interesting. this is telling me that i'm not young any more... judy was telling me that she ran away to nz when she was 18 and is now on a bit of a tour of oz and doesn't know when she'll get back home to akaroa, near christ church. she then got into a deep and meaningful about how motherhood takes over your life and then suddenly leaves you when your kids grow up and you don't know what to do. she was an interesting lady. they're pressuring me at the hostel here to go on their tour to ayers rock but i'm coming to the realisation that i think i'm now a grown up and i don't want to hang around with these people. i had a good bitch with claire, one of the british 'telly gang' at coober and who was around the same age as me, about how irritating backpackers are (i know i am one but...). it was reassuring to know i'm not on my own. so i've decided that i'm going to ayers rock by greyhound and then get a tour with the aboriginal people from that area. and do it on my own. i think that will be more authentic than camping out with a load of kids. now, where's my pipe and slippers...