Our time in Alice Springs is becoming like Rocky, the sequels just keep coming but unlike most sequels the Alice seems to be just getting better for us. After seeing Beth off on Thursday the rest of the day and Friday was spent doing the usual restock, cleaning, and replenishment of items the smallest ladies had grown out of. Our fridge had been working over time for the last couple of months. The ice had built up and we cleaned out half a bucket of ice, and it is only a small freezer section.
Thursday night was Alice Springs' answer to the Mindel Beach Markets. There were several stalls with food from around the world as well a another stall selling homemade biscuits and sweets with an Italian background. Lots of community groups had stalls to raise awareness for their cause. One of the quietest community stalls was the guy trying to convert people to a vegan lifestyle. Out here surrounded by so much cattle country it must be like pushing the something up hill with a pointy stick. He could not even give away his vegan samples. We did enjoy the food we did eat laced with meat of various kinds as it was.
Friday night we had booked a walk at the Desert Park on the outskirts of town. We met our guides, Pam and Cam and their powerful red beamed torches. They do need to invest in some new batteries for their torches, ones that will last a full walk. The park has a captive breading program for little marsupials called Mala. Only a few years ago this threatened species was down to just 28 individuals left, today the reading program has brought their numbers back to over 500! The Nocturnal Tour is an excellent way to see some of the animals on the desert that we cannot see during the day in their natural environment. The Park has a four acre area protected by electric fences to keep out foxes, cats, dogs and any other nasty that might want to eat or steal the precious animals. The tour takes a stroll through the scrub in the enclosure for about an hour while the animals scamper around in the light of the bright red torches. We saw bilby, mala, native mice and rats, echidna, and bettong.
Saturday morning the excitement was electric around our camp, Nina (aka mum, mother-in-law or gran) was arriving today for a quick visit. Nina had been missing her favourite son-in-law so much that she used the gran kids as an excuse to see him. The biggest surprise was John (aka dad, father-in-law, grandpa) was on the plane also! What a nice couple of days we had with them by the pool, at dinner, morning tea, breakfast, yes their whole visit was punctuated by food. We all enjoyed having them visit and it was hard saying goodbye at the airport. It won't be long until we see them again for Christmas.
Tuesday and we were leaving to explore the country east of Alice Springs for a few nights. The problem today was it was raining in Alice Springs! A drop of rain hits you every couple of minutes if you are lucky, but rain is rain. It was also much cooler, maybe only high 20s. Girls found a friend that we had seen at a couple of places so Angela and Nicholas had to packup on their own. That really made the packup much longer. The three girls are great helps during packups and setups doing some of the smaller jobs that add up to lots of time. They are particularly good at rolling up ropes, stowing poles, winching the camper closed, and compressing so the camper will close and folding matting. Nicholas and Angela also got talking to the parents of our girls friend. They were at Litchfield when the car was towed out. They had also made enquiries since to find out if the car was ok and we were able to continue. When they came across the nullabor their car died and after a 700km tow they had to replace the car!
We eventually arrived at Gemtree (it is either Gem Tree or Gemtree not even the road signs can make up their mind). These parts have some really funny, only in Australia, stories to tell. Like Ruby Gap, the surveyor found rubies in the gap and sent word back to the coast. When word got out hundreds of men travelled to Oodnadatta by train then walked the remaining 600km to become rich on rubies. The problem was when the rubies made it to England they were red garnets not rubies. Fortunately all was not lost because at Paddy's Rockhole they found gold and a few made a living on gold for a while.
Wednesday we all headed out to explore the area. There are a couple of self drive tours that originate from Gemtree. The first we did was to the 'mad Russians' copper mine not far down a track off a track off the main road. When we found the right site there was a heap of his old gear there and most of his mine also was able to be explored. As we walked closer to the mine site the rocks on the ground had a distinctive green colour to them. We had a good look at the remaining mining equipment and climbed in through the mine.
Our second drive took us to the mica mines last worked by the French using camels to transport the mica during WWII. The track to the mica mines was very rough as it bounced us over rocks and ledges and through dry creek beds. The mica mines were little more than tunnels and holes in a single small hill with several dry stone building ruins scattered around. We all had great fun crawling through tunnels, particularly one that went from one side of the hill clear to the other. Many of the other shafts seemed to go straight down some only a few meters and some possibly 20m or more. The hill had been made into Swiss Cheese through efforts to extract all the mica.
When we arrived back at Gemtree there was enough time for the girls to get in some fossicking before dinner. The lovely stones that the three girls found were fabulous examples of garnets, smokey quartz, pink quartz, crystals, and crystal clusters. Some of the specimens are very large particularly some of the garnets and the crystal clusters as large as a fist!
Thursday we packedup and moved on driving part of Binns Track (http://www.macdonnellranges.com/binns-track-visitors-information-guide.htm) to Arltunga Historic Reserve. Arltunga is surprisingly well preserved owing to the buildings that were built being constructed of the most plentiful building material in the area, stone. The guided walk around the government works took us to the Assayers residence, post office, battery managers residence, office buildings and workers buildings. All these buildings were mostly still standing in good repair except the post office that was built on three sides using wattle and daub (termite food). Oddly there were all these buildings clustered together then over 1km away was the police station and gaol. The police station and gaol were still being used in the 1940s when it moved to Harts Range.
There were abandoned mines to explore around Arltunga. One mine had a ladder down then we crawled along tunnels before coming up another ladder at the other end. The life out here must have been hard with little water to process ore and, because of distance, supplies were prohibitively expensive. Few of the miners made any real money and according to the tombstones at the cemetery most died young and with little money.
Even today there is a company that is processing the waste from the Great Western Mine and extracting 1.2g per 1000kg processed. Not a lot of return for their investment. The Great Western Mine is a large open cut mine that has been worked on and off for about the last hundred years.
We stayed the night at Old Ambalindum Homestead only about 18km from Arltunga, or as we found out less than 6km through the paddocks. Ambalindum station has turned the original homestead, workers quarters and have built a bunk room for travellers accommodation. The very friendly hostess, Maggie, does everything she can to make your stay very comfortable.
Chelsea started using her pool noodle as a horse with string for a bridle and a carabiner as a lead rope, of course her sisters copied and together they had mustered tens of thousands head of cattle. When Maggie came over to ask if we would like to meet the orphaned brumby foal, the girls were too excited for words. The foal was only days old, still had the umbilical cord drying. The poor little thing was so timid but lovely.
Friday morning Maggie came to visit again with a rock with green garnet unit for the girls. She also told us of a station drive up a hill to look out over Ambalindum Station of some 350,000Km2 (bigger than Tassie) with 14000 head of cattle. We jumped at the opportunity to drive some station tracks. The drive was only 3.5km to the top of the hill and just another 3km and we could have been back at Arltunga.
We drove on to Ross River Station for a sticky beak and ended up staying for lunch. RRS has a funny story to it. The station is on the Ross HWY from Alice Springs and is as far as the highway goes. As the manager said to Nicholas, "it's the longest driveway in the territory". RRS also offer accommodation and our meal was pretty good.
After lunch we drove on to Trephina Gorge. As a family we are reading 'Alice On The Line' a young girl's recount of her experiences at the Alice Springs telegraph station in the late 1800s. From the book we already knew that Trephina Gorge was named after an aboriginal house maid at the telegraph station. Similar Emily and Jesse Gaps, that we saw, were named after the daughters of the first telegraph station master at Alice Springs. We also stopped at corroborree rock but we cannot be told any details about the rock which detracts our interest from the rock somewhat.
And with that we were back at Alice Springs.
While in Alice we also visited many places of interest.
ANZAC Hill view of Alice SpringsAdelaide House - Flynn's first hospital
Original School House
Alice Springs Telegraph Station
Alice Springs Solar Array
Sunset Camel ride
Ghan Museum riding the rails.
Dinner at Overlanders Steakhouse
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