In Alice

Sat 15th May
Up at 6am, and at the airport by 7:20am, car hire drop was a breeze, airport check in simple, queue for dropping bags enormous and late comers for earlier flights kept on being taken to the front of the line; very annoying.
Flight was about 3 hours, we watched Invictus but they started it too late and so we failed to see the last 5 minutes!! We were told that SA won but that wasn't really very satisfying. Because the film was on and it was quite early morning we all had to close our blinds so we didn't really get much of a view over the desert as we flew in and out of the cloud.
As we left the plane in Alice Springs we could feel the change in the temperature from Melbourne, much more pleasant in the low 20's. There were no formalities and our bags awaited us so we hopped in a taxi for the 15 minute ride into town and to our motel - The White Gum. On the way we followed the course of a dried up river, the red sand was covered in long grasses; the ten year drought was broken by more rain in 3 days than they usually get in a year; the river had been flowing only a week ago and many of the roads in the area had been closed; but now it was getting back to normal. Groups of aboriginal men were sitting amongst the trees on the edge of the road and as we entered into town we slowly noticed more and more groups of aboriginal families, walking, sitting or playing Aussie rules football.
We dropped our bags, changed shoes and then walked the 10 mins or so into the centre of town. We had a bite to eat and then found our way (it was not very difficult - there is one main street that goes into the centre, 1 set of traffic lights and then about 3 square blocks of centre with a pedestrian street (an extension of the main street), a shopping mall and a supermarket) to the reptile centre. It is a place very much like that where Celso works with shows for the public and then lots of things to go and look at, the only difference here is that it is reptiles only (no spiders, or lemurs, or millipedes or the like). We spent a good couple of hours there, the highlight being seeing the Thorny Devils that had been taken out the front of the building onto the pavement where a line of ants passed so that they could sit and feed. They are much smaller than I expected (only about 10 - 15 cm), beautifully coloured, and they can stay very still until an ant passes when they can move their heads quite fast and stick out their short fat tongues. They do a sort of robotic rocking movement before they take any steps, but even that was rare. Celso was very happy to see Shingleback Skinks and Monitors.
The time change here is only half an hour different from Melbourne, but with the early start we were all quite tired and after the centre and a quick look around the town (amazing aboriginal paintings laid out on the street at the feet of their artists) we headed back to our motel and an early night.

Sun
Celso and I left Tristan sleeping while we went in to town to the Sunday market. We were expecting lots of local/aboriginal art and crafts but it turned ot to be a very 'White' affair with just a few aboriginal artists showing their works. We wandered backwards and forwards through the market and on 2 occassions, having seen some paintings that we liked and then going on to check out some more, we returned to find our favoured paintings gone, sold to someone else. Finally we found a little shop on the way back to the hotel and out of the main run of the market which had loads of paintings and we selected our horde to take back home - it is very difficult to select as there are many fantastic examples.
We managed to get Tristan up and about by 11am and our pick up to go out of town to a camel farm. Our driver said no more than 2 words on the journey and very little during the 1 hour camel ride. I rode Doc, of the floppy and dribbley lower lip, who kept on doing a little jig as the flies annoyed his legs. In front, and very much in nose poking distance, was Tris on Ruby, she farted a lot as Doc stuck his nose where it was not wanted. In front of the explosive bottomed duo was Celso on Trillion, and in front of them was our silent host. We wandered around a big field with views towards distant mountains and a few kangaroos looking at us in a cautious but interested way and then bounding off as we got close, there were also loads of birds, Gallahs, pigeons, sparrow and tit-like tiny things and loads that we could hear but not see! It wasn't until we returned that he started to talk, and talk and talk. First it was about how he caught his camels in the wild rather than breed them and then he went into a bit of a rant about how humans are the worst creatures in the Universe and other random things all interspersed with much swearing! He was like a very angry crocodile dundee type!
We returned to the hotel for a bite to eat and then were collected by Frosty to go quad biking on a cattle station that was the first in the country to renew its 99 year lease, and was also the oldest in the Northern Territory having been started when the telegraph came through in 1872. We rode out along dry river beds out to a big water hole where we stopped for a bit of an explanation of how the station was run. The cattle are free range and are only caught (mustered) once a year to select the young male calves for castration and the male yearlings for sale. No treatments are routinely given, there are no worms or other parasites in the area because it is just too hot. The water holes are surrounded by fences and have a funneled entry gate that swings open inwards when pushed and another exit gate that swings the other way. The cattle learn how to use these to get the water and then once a year they find that the exit doesn't work and they are trapped. Up to 2/3 of the cattle will be mustered in that way. The other 1/3rd are tracked down by helicopter and quad bike. The helicopter is also used to cull wild camels and donkeys that have no natural predators out here and cause real damage to the trees. Camles were introduced by Algerians who came to work on the original telegraph and also brought supplies across the desert from Adelaide in the South until the train line was completed in the 1880s. The donkeys became feral after a gold rush in the 1920s in a place about 100km north of Alice. Both are considered real pests by most of the people around the Red Centre. It was a fun ride; Tris was an expert on his bike (an adult one, with a big sticker on it saying 'Not for Under 16s'); it was much easier than the ride we tackled in New Zealand (and much drier). In fact there were small showers that had fallen as we drove out to the camel ride in the morning and then again as we drove out to the quad bike place, so this meant that the ride was not a dusty affair either - perfect.
We returned to the hotel for a bit of a rest and to pack and then headed out to Beau Jangles for an early supper. We chose to share a mixed grill of crocodile rissoles, kangaroo steak, buffalo steak, emu sausages and camel kebab. I liked the crocodile, emu and camel but I couldn't tell which was which between the kangaroo and the buffalo! They were both ok, but nothing to shout about.