Coober Pedy was a bit of a dust bowl, so we kept moving pretty quickly. Actually, Amanda and I were talking about this on the way up. My plan for this trip is to travel through as much country as possible to get what I'm calling "context". My version of Australia is not too diverse from Mount Waverley. I want to drive through the desert at 130km per hour overtaking roadtrains. I want to watch sunsets over a barren land and think of that as Australia, not a 30% sale at Chadstone.
Still, on the road between Coober Pedy and Alice Springs we drove straight through the small town of Erldunda without blinking the indicator. This could be perceived as a pity, as there lies Uluru. Amanda, I think, wasn't too happy to see us sail past Uluru without so much as a glance. I think indeed she wanted /me/ to see it as much as anything. I get that, but I'm just happy drive'n.
Anyway, we had an awesome night in Alice Springs. We met up with Heather and went out to a restaurant and really caught up in a way that we haven't done in quite a while. Heather has seemingly set herself up in an awesome place where she can travel to all these remote areas (currently four hours out of Alice Springs in an Aboriginal community, soon to be Christmas Island) serve as a nurse and really experience what it means to live there, not just sail through at 130km per hour.
Uluru absent, we went to the Devil's Marbles today and took some nice photos. It was an interesting place, not only for the interesting geology, but also for the veneer that has been painted on it. The indigenous communities say that the dreaming still exists under these rocks and that the "old men" come out to play if you camp there, they mean no harm but they will send you mad. The white communities tie it to a local area that is named the UFO centre of Australia. We arrived at this hub of auspice expecting to /feel/ the aura of the weird. Instead we saw some pretty cool rocks.
Fun fun.
- Daniel.
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