After an early breakfast with Jo and Kate (from the Magnetic Island crowd) I went downstairs and found from where the the Greyhound bus for Mount Isa would soon be leaving . My right ear had been quite painful after all the diving, and I was a bit concerned about heading off with a potential ear infection. A nearby pharmacy sold me some drops that would supposedly keep the ear dry and sterile inside, and sooth it a bit.
Once on the bus and heading out of town it didn’t take long for the scenery to become somewhat monotonous. There was very little to actually look at, and it didn’t help that the first film that was shown was a documentary about long bus trips on Greyhound buses! Later they showed an entertaining new film with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere – essentially the Pygmalion story, but set in Los Angeles. It was called Pretty Woman.
The scenery had been getting progressively more and more arid, and the occasional settlements dwindled to mere truck stops with a handful of houses. After 10 hours the bus rolled into Mount Isa, a small town set in the middle of a vast semi arid nothingness. I had to change to a different bus to reach the next destination which was the Threeways Roadhouse at a road junction about 7 hours further west.
Crossing from Queensland into Northern Territory something rather strange happened. The driver told us to change our watches to Northern Territory time. But the change wasn’t a full hour, just half an hour.
The bus was heading for the junction of the east-west highway 66 (the main route from the east coast to the centre of Australia) and highway 87 (the main north-south route through the centre of Australia). At this all-important junction there was, I found out, approximately nothing whatsoever. No – there was exactly nothing whatsoever! About 200 metres north of the junction was a diminutive fuel station with a low building behind it, where those of us heading for Alice Springs sleepily descended in the earlier hours of the morning of 10th April. I’d reached the Threeways Roadhouse.
At 3 am the southbound bus from the north coast rolled in, and I gratefully climbed aboard. By 9 am, after sleeping on and off, I was in Alice Springs. The first task was to book a bus out to Uluru (Ayers Rock) for the following day. I had thought this was close by Alice Springs, but of course on the big map of Australia everything looks close. I would need to sit on a bus for another 5 hours to see this famous monolith and then nearly 3 hours to come back the other way to be able to then head south.
I met Jo and Kate at the bus office, and we all went to Melanka Lodge hostel to get some accommodation. It wasn’t that great, but after we went and got some lunch I managed a siesta. Later in the afternoon I went for a wander up Anzac Hill to take some photos looking down at the town. Then I headed out along the dry Todd River towards the old Telegraph Station.
I hadn’t strayed far from the tidy streets of Alice, but I suddenly felt I was in the middle of the inhospitable Outback, as the late afternoon sun started to fade. I could hear dingos (Australian wild dogs) howling nearby, and saw one briefly. Round a fire in the river bed there were some aboriginal people sitting and drinking.
The original reason for the existence of Alice Springs was as a repeater station on the telegraph line from Adelaide to Darwin, and thus to the rest of the world. I found this historic hut, and nearby was the actual “spring”.
It was getting dark by this time so I hurried back to the hostel for a meal and a chat with Jo (Kate had managed to get a flight to Uluru instead of taking the bus the next day).