A Town Like Alice

Arrived here off the Ghan this afternoon. A great journey with wonderful food and the additional advantage of making me feel very young. Most of the passengers were 80 in the shade and travelled by train 'cos they couldn't have coped with climbing in and out of a bus. Some of them looked like they might cark it in the heat while waiting on the platform.

Red earth, strangely decorated with green now after lots of recent rain.

I met a delightful 85-year-old gent, Peter, who had the sleeper opposite mine. He told me about his most recent stint as a butler in the Director's Cottage in Broken Hill! Which I believe came to an end twenty years ago. Some times I thought I might nod off if I had to hear about one more sailing chum, or another anecdote from his working life, but he was generally pretty good value. Met a Dutch woman whose boyfriend dropped me off at the hotel.

Been wandering round Alice Springs since I arrived in the Alice, and I've never seen so many Aboriginal people in my life. Another piece of culture shock was being asked for my driver's licence when I bought a bottle of wine in Woolworth's. At first I thanked the boy for his compliment about my age: thought I must be hot stuff now that I've relaxed a bit on holiday. But no. . . "Some people have restrictions on whether they can buy alcohol."

Tomorrow, at 6 in the morning, my tour leader will pick me up and transport me by 4WD van, with a group of my fellow adventurers, to a campsite at Yulara , from where we'll explore the area around Uluru. More later when there's more to write.

Rundling down the Mall

Not impressed with the room in the Mercure Grosvenor in North Terrace. Depressing: papered over windows. No view to the street. Able to see at the edge of the paper a brick wall belonging to an adjacent building. Even the meagre natural light from that city canyon would be preferable to no natural light. But. . .let's not dwell on the negative. Why did I stay here? Lorraine, the agent told me it was opposite the station. It is, but it's not opposite Keswick Station, from which the Ghan leaves.

Last night had a wander down Hindley Street. Was following the map,looking for Rundle Mall and all the restaurants. (Another thing that I've discovered doesn't improve with age are my map-reading skills.) I was headed in the opposite direction. Hindley Street is the red light district,I found out.

Dinner in a Malay-Thai restaurant promised to blow my head off, but they gave me the tourist version. Still pleasant but no excitement.

Sitting on the Ghan right now, getting ready to leave Adelaide.

I know I'm getting old when. . .

the excitement of the journey incapacitates me.

I'd planned a journey to the Northern Territory so that I wouldn't be sitting home alone, thinking of my son, away in Spain for three weeks. I wanted to take photos of that red earth and deep blue sky. (Emus charging across sand dunes icing on the cake, if I managed to shoot some.)

Bought an iPad, thinking that I could upload my photos on the run. No, I discovered, I'd need a camera connection kit. They hadn't arrived in Sydney yet, but they should be there within a month. I waited and bought the iPad and the kit. Ready to blog now and upload wonderful images of the outback to Flickr as I take them.

But I seem unable to cope effectively with the excitement of travel now: can't think straight, can't move fast enough. I left my camera connection kit in the drawer when my friend showed up to drive me to the airport. So, this is my boring blog from Adelaide, without a single image to break up the text.

(I could go on for an eternity, but it's so hard to type on an iPad keyboard.)   

Sent from my iPad