Australia day 16

12 July

Considering how far we'd gotten yesterday, I realized that getting to Canberra by Wednesday and Sydney by Friday would require simplifying the route ahead. The road through the mountains between Wagga Wagga and Cooma has caravan parks, but it didn't seem like a good idea to go through those mountains in the dark. Wagga Wagga seemed too close to be my goal for the day, but Cooma seemed too far. We left Mildura with a vague idea where we'd be sleeping during the coming night.

Shortly after leaving Mildura we crossed the Murray River and entered the state of New South Wales, leaving Victoria behind for good. The territory we crossed now seemed as desolate, if not more so (if that is possible), than the outback we'd crossed south of Coober Pedy a few days ago. Once again I fell in behind a road train as soon as it passed me while I was valiantly trying to maintain the speed limit. When I'm all by myself out there on a desolate highway I tend to fall below the speed limit while trying to wrestle with the wind for control of the caravan's steering wheel. Again, I followed this road train for over an hour, until we reached Hay. All along the roadside we saw balls of white lint, like remnants of snow in the ditch, but this was cottony or wooly. Had I prepared some sacks for collecting it, I could have collected quite a load within a kilometer alone. I assumed it was wool, considering the region we were traveling through, but later, in Hay, I was informed that it was cotton.

Now Hay is the kind of place you'd think had nothing to do. We have discovered that almost every town we've stopped in (or driven right through) has an information center. If you seek them out when you first arrive in town you'll find they can be really really helpful. They have so much useful information on so many topics, you'd be foolish not to visit them every time you come to a new area. We learned that the Sheep Shearers Hall of Fame in Hay, called "Shear Outback" was scheduled to put on a sheep shearing demonstration in 20 minutes. We high-tailed it over there and got there with 13 minutes to spare (traffic on Hay's central thoroughfare slowed us down or we'd have gotten there sooner). On the way over there I found more ways to use "hay" in a sentence that Razelle could bear (Hey, look!; What the hey?; That ain't hay; Hey, hey hey; Hey we live in Heh, too [our neighborhood in Beer Sheva], etc. Razelle groaned at each one. When we got to the ticket window I even said to the attendant, "Hey there!" We got two tickets and found that the Shear Outback shearing shed was coincidentally out back (behind the museum – you see what too much driving can do to a fellow's mind: he starts telling jokes only he thinks are funny).

Our demonstrator was a veteran of the trade. His name is Billy. He answered all our questions. As with the whale museum in Albany (weeks ago, it seemed) we were the only attendees of this demonstration. 

We felt like VIPs as Billy sheared a sheep just for us. The most important fact I came away with is that sheep must be sheared or they will die. Therefore, because this isn't something that can be done by automation, someone has to do it, and they have to know how to do it well and they have to do a lot of sheep at a time. I gained a great deal of respect for Billy and his fellow professionals. We returned to the museum and went through it with a lot more appreciation for all the professional in the wool industry, after watching Billy and listening to all he had to say.

Before bidding Hay goodbye we called ahead to the caravan park in Wagga Wagga to make a reservation. "No problem, sir," the cheery voice in Wagga Wagga said, "I'll be waiting for your arrival with a light on." And she was true to her word. We got the last site in the place. After we pulled through the gate, she turned of the reception office light and called it a day.

We returned to the information center in Hay after that and asked about the road ahead. Someone off-handedly mentioned that the route I'd chosen through the Snowy Mountains required snow tires. I told Razelle that nowadays snow tires are not sold because radial tires are adequate for driving on snow. Besides, how much snow could there be in Australia? Probably some mountain peaks with snow caps well above the highway. At the information center the attendee sat at her computer terminal and surfed for information on road conditions and weather reports for the region ahead. That's what I meant about these information centers being very helpful. We were told the road was open and the probability of precipitation in Cooma for tomorrow was only 30%. We thanked her and drove on.

Getting to Wagga Wagga involved the same kind of long empty roads across open empty scrub land that has come to typify the outback. Apparently, the section of highway from Coober Pedy to Port Augusta crossed an extension of this same region. Where previously we'd only seem the occasional emu in there, here, we saw the occasional flock of sheep. Once again, I found someone to follow through the twilight and gathering darkness. I felt safer crossing such territory letting someone else plow through the darkness, leading the way for me. Here, during these winter months, light starts to fail by 4:30 PM when it is overcast (as it has been the past two days) and it is already dark out there by 6:00 PM. We reached Wagga Wagga by 7:00 PM. Everyone there was inside their recreational vehicles. It was very quiet. It might as well have been the middle of the night.

Australia day 15

11 July

We are definitely in a different region of Australia now. As we approached Port Augusta yesterday I noticed how many more cars and fewer recreational vehicles we were traveling with (and against). The highways of the deep interior had very few cars on them; just road trains and campers of every conceivable sort. Also, the road trains here are shorter now – double trailers pulled by a truck cab, rather than the triple trailers we had to contend with in the country's wide open center.

We drove past farmland now. We saw fields of newly growing grain (winter wheat, perhaps?). Where grain had not been planted, cattle grazed in pastures. A pastoral setting with cultivated fields – this was a refreshing sight.

Our first stop of the morning was in a preciously quaint little town called Crystal Brook, located about an hour south of Port Augusta. The buildings' facades along the one block of town that constituted its commercial area were early 20th century. We were charmed by their appearance. Time had not passed this town by – it had an ATM machine and a pizza bar, probably an Internet Café, too. But its architecture had remained what it had been and would continue to be, well into the future. We would have lingered longer, but we had far to go this day and the road beckoned.

Our next stop was for fuel in a town called Morgan. They were selling souvenirs inside the petrol station when I went in to pay, that said, "Where the hell is Morgan?" This is where our journey brought us to our first encounter with the sought-after mighty Murray River. Razelle checked our tourist literature to see if anything of tourism value was mentioned. The most intriguing entry was their original morgue. We were a little slap happy from all our driving by this point. I broke Razelle up with the observation that if Morgan were to have an all-you-can-eat restaurant next to their original morgue it would be the "Smorgasbord by Morgan's morgue". Well, it was funny at the time. It kept us laughing for quite a while (gallows humor).

We found a scenic overlook of the Murray a short distance from Morgan. I walked down to the flood plain. Lots of mud – evidence that the river had been out of its banks not long ago. I noticed that there were terrestrial snails here on the bushes, just like in Israel (a different species, but the same life-form). I wonder if these are invasive or if this type of snail is more cosmopolitan than I assumed?

From here, a ferry took us across the Murray to the south side at Weikerie. The ride only took a few minutes, barely long enough to snap a couple of photos of us in the middle of the Murray. Apparently, the Murray leaves its banks often enough to discourage building a bridge across here. An impressive oxbow curves around almost back on itself above the ferry crossing. The highway department was gracious enough to construct a rest area where we could stop to photograph the sight of the river sweeping around this great bend.

After passing Renmark, signs appeared along the highway saying that we were about to enter another fruit and veggie quarantine zone. We'd just bought some bananas and some potatoes that morning in Crystal Brook. I wasn't enthusiastic about jettisoning them. I continued driving and hoped for the best. We passed an inspection station at the Victoria state line. It was late enough in the day that no one was there. Perhaps in winter this is not an issue.

Darkness caught us far from anything. Mildura was far ahead. Our caravan directory listed a caravan park there. From the car, while driving, Razelle called them and they had a powered site available. They would reserve it for us until we arrived. The zinger was that as we entered Victoria we also entered a new time zone. We were half an hour later in arriving simply because of the half hour time difference between South Australia and Victoria. No matter. When we reached Mildura we were expected and our site was waiting for us.

Getting to Mildura in the dark, along a long straight road across empty real estate would have been torture, had I not driven more than 90 km of it behind a double-trailer road train, matching his speed the whole way. I lost count of the number of dead kangaroos we passed in the dark, but I felt secure as long as the truck led me through this land. He did a mitzvah by leading me safely to Mildura, and I doubt he even knew it.

Australia day 14

10 July

We woke up in Coober Pedy after dawn. We have a morning routine by now. Living out of a caravan is taking on a pattern. Yet we went about this routine without urgency and only hit the road at 10:15 AM. We've often started out earlier, but today we discovered that most of our neighbors have their own patterns and we were in sync with them for a change, as they all vacated the campgrounds about the same time we did. I couldn't help noticing this morning that there are rock pigeons in Coober Pedy. I don't remember seeing these elsewhere in Australia. Alice Spring's pigeons were very different, with a pointy topnotch of feathers and a habit of flaring their tail feathers when confronting each other. Coober Pedy's pigeons are the kind I recognize (and have come to loathe) from everywhere else I've been in the world (I call them "feathered cockroaches!").

Today's countdown of kilometers to Port Augusta led us through some beautiful outback landscape. Wide sweeping vistas transformed into parkland that had bluish-green bushes and evenly spaced tall trees that looked very much liked they belonged in a Japanese bonsai garden, due to their sparse crowns and graceful limbs. The dappled cloud pattern to the south perfectly complemented the dappled terrestrial patterns of bushes and trees. The grasses and low perennials that filled in the empty spaces among these with pale tawny beige and yellowish green completed the entire effect. The drawback was that these grasses sustained gregarious flocks of small birds. I suspected they were Zebra Finches. As I drove along, flocks of these little birds flew up from the grasses and crossed in front of the caravan. Sometimes their deft aerial acrobatics save them, but several times there were some that collided with our caravan with delicate but fatal little thuds. It saddened me that I had probably killed these little birds. I couldn't prevent them from passing in front of my vehicle.

After we had travelled some time in the direction of Port Augusta I needed to get out and stretch. We stopped in an area that was treeless to the horizons, and the vegetation was no higher than my knees. I heard the distinctive nasal calls of Zebra Finches. I know their calls because I had kept a pair as pets for years in Beer Sheva. I used to imitate their calls (albeit poorly) and interact with them at home. I walked out into this outback landscape a ways from our caravan and eventually had another of my bucket list experiences. Zebra Finches were calling to each other in every direction I turned (Zebra Finches in surround sound). I had hoped to find these familiar friends in their native habitat and here I was in their midst.

This empty-looking landscape, devoid as it was of any relief, was where we saw several free-range emus in family groups of two or three near the road. This certainly was exciting! There was quite an abundance of road-kill kangaroos along this stretch of the highway. Road-kill is a useful indication of what lives where. There was a stretch of highway closer to Port Augusta where a number of cattle carcasses in different states of decay festooned the highway's shoulders. Rarer were the camel carcasses. I saw some dead foxes, and some dead rabbits, too, but the abundance of dead kangaroos alarmed me. I hope to never suddenly encounter a live kangaroo directly in my path, but someone must have had this misfortune if kangaroo carcasses were so plentiful.

A couple of other stops along the route either served as fueling stations or as leg-stretching stations. Among the former was Glendambo. It proudly boasted of populations of 22,500 sheep, two million flies and 30 humans. We have a photo of the sign that testifies to this. 

Among the latter, we stopped by a lake that ordinarily is dry, but this season it was filled. It was one of many such immense lakes in an otherwise arid outback. We marveled at its appearance. Its extent could not be determined from our vantage point. Where we parked to admire this, someone had left a flat red rock on a picnic table with a "Magen David" hexagram and the initials "H D" (House of David?) engraved into it (the rock). We photographed this unusual "archeological relic" as well (it's on film in Razelle's camera).

We finally pulled into Port Augusta – our outback-crossing odyssey complete. Ahead of us lay a new Australian landscape yet to be discovered. Port Augusta was to be our caravan's port of call for this night.

Australia day 13

9 July

Due to the frigid temperature in our caravan, sleep was problematic. We managed to survive the night, but by 6:00 AM, when we both found ourselves awake, we decided to get underway, even though it was dark outside. At leased with the engine running we'd have warmth and we'd be that much closer to our next destination. We had set our GPS for Port Augusta, 1018 km to the south. It would take us more than 10 hours of non-stop driving to get there at the speed limit, a goal we realistically expected we'd spread over two days, not one. By 6:30 AM we eased out of Erldunda with a full tank of fuel (topped up the night before) and headed south. Our talking GPS announced that we had 1000 key-low-me-terse to go. (1000 km) and for the rest of the day we listened as she (our GPS had an Australian-accented female voice) counted them down 20 km at a time.

Along the way we watched carefully for wildlife in the inky darkness while I drove with the center line directly below my feet. None popped up. We also watched as the darkness was replaced by the faintest light of dawn, followed in stages by the moment a horizon could be discerned ahead of us, and then by the moment the shapes around us took on hues of natural color. Razelle remarked that last night's sunset had been shades of purple and pink, but this morning's sunrise was instead shades of red, orange and yellow.

We reached Kulgera ahead of the sun, but not by much. I went into the roadhouse and met the station-mistress. I asked her how cold it had gotten during the night. "Minus six," was her reply. In Fahrenheit, that's about 21 degrees! We sure picked the wrong night for an un-powered caravan site! All around us were surfaces dusted with a layer of frost. The first rays of the sun appeared and selectively burned the frost away from only the surfaces they could reach.

I posed our stuffed monkey on a frosted fence rail for a photo-op of the frost. I left our bitter melons in the fruit quarantine bin and then we drove to the South Australia (SA) state line. They don't allow fresh fruit and "veggies" across the line, so we stopped there and ate our cherry tomatoes, snow peas and apples with salad fixings. It was a nutritious pre-breakfast eaten in vain. Not only were there no inspectors here, but the very next roadhouse we came to within SA (Marla, where we topped up the tank, of course) sold the very produce we didn't want to relinquish. How would anyone know which of our fruits and veggies came from which side of the line after we purchased more here?

Some may consider the vast outback boring (Razelle can testify on their behalf) but I found the interminable vastness to be endlessly fascinating. We stopped twice at rest areas in the middle of seeming nothingness, where I stretched my legs and first found a park land of coarse red sand filled with white-barked gum trees supporting a wondrously cacophonous community of birds; and later, a prairie land paved with weather-worn pebbles shining with a sun-baked patina. Boring? Not in the least!

We reached Coober Pedy by 3:30 PM and topped up again. The approach to Coober Pedy passed kilometers of weirdly raped landscape pimpled with teepee-shaped tailing mounds left over from the opal mining process. It was otherworldly! It was sad that these heaps marred the landscape everywhere, left behind by opal-fever inflicted miners! We had to investigate Coober Pedy. We ended our day here.

Coober Pedy is an international destination. Our caravan park is part of a motel complex. People to the right of us in the caravan park spoke German, to the left of us something Baltic-sounding, at the front desk I passed Arabic speakers wearing Saudi getup. The literature said that one of the opal mines offered a self-guided tour in Hebrew, among its many available languages. We stopped for groceries and were attended by Filipinos who suggested that the Chinese restaurant might have vegetarian dishes. The entire downtown area is perhaps three blocks long. At either end is a pizza bar and a petrol station, in between are a number of opal shops.

Razelle entered one of these opal shops and struck up an immediate rapport with its owner, who was originally Greek. He'd lived in Coober Pedy exactly as long as Razelle had lived in Beer Sheva. He'd immigrated here to mine opals. Now he sells them. He recommended the Greek restaurant in town. Razelle had a wonderful vegetarian musaka, I had a wonderful Greek salad with brown olives and feta cheese to go with a small bowl of vegetarian spaghetti. It was all heavenly. I also indulged myself with a goblet of red Shiraz wine. We returned to our campground very contented from this meal and from the Mediterranean ambiance. After 3 weeks away from home we realized how much we missed that ambiance and those flavors.

Whoever says the outback is boring hasn't been to Coober Pedy! 

Australia day 12

8 July

Although we planned to leave Curtin Springs early enough to get to Uluru in time for the 10:00 AM interpretive walk, we fell steadily behind schedule and didn't leave until 9:30 AM for the hour's drive back to Uluru. I had the opportunity to chat with members of the staff and family at this working cattle station – tourist rest stop. They left some literature in our room about their history that, upon reading, made me respect them a great deal more than I had at first when I paid so much money for the room the day before. The room was small, but the effort they expended to make sure passersby had accommodations at all was great. The laws of supply and demand apply here as they do everywhere. They didn't have a lot to offer, but the demand for it was certainly high.

I chatted with four college-aged Australian women who were traveling together in a 4X4 vehicle they'd driven around the outback. The caked earth on its tires was the tell-tale color of the red centre tracks they'd driven. We talked about kangaroos. So far, tfu, tfu, we hadn't encountered any in the dark. They, stray cattle, emus and feral camels can kill you (and you them) if you collide with them. The women gave me a particular bit of advice I will keep in mind. Few cars are on the road at night. To increase your chances of avoiding being surprised by a kangaroo in the dark, they advised driving down the center of the road when no one is around.

This return trip to Uluru was over familiar ground, yet, at this time of day, the desert looked so much more vibrant. Perhaps it’s the difference in lighting; perhaps we are moved to see the details with a discerning eye and with greater reverence than we did the day before. This area was blessed last summer with rain that fell in good amounts at regular intervals with warm days between. The old rancher at Curtin Springs described it this way to me. Grasses cover the entire landscape. The red earth is not visible for all this lush growth. Rodents have proliferated, so the entire food chain is improved from the bottom up. But all that dried grass, lovely as it is, worries me as a potential wildfire hazard. That's how nature returns all this excess to equilibrium.

We breezed right into the park by showing our pre-paid ticket, while half a dozen recreation vehicles queued up in all their variety in the lane for first-time visitors. I'd hoped to see the demonstrations I'd missed yesterday, but yesterday was some special Indigenous occasion. They weren't here today. Oh well. I watched some wonderfully informative video presentations Razelle had seen the day before and Razelle spent quality time in the parts of the Cultural Centre that were important to her.

We then drove to the next part of the park to see the Olgas. These massive protuberances of rock poking out of the red-earth plains are altogether different from Uluru. I walked into their midst, leaving Razelle the keys and all the resources she needed at the caravan (we are starting to get this right, finally).

The Olgas are masses of conglomerate, tilted only slightly. They tower vertically overhead when you walk into the cleft between them, dwarfing the people ahead of you far up the trail.

I spent less time here than I had walking at Uluru. Enough was enough, only sooner. Time had come to leave the Red Centre of Australia and visit other parts of this country. Ah, but getting there will now take a lot of driving. But that was the plan.

We topped up the tank at the resort, headed back past Curtin Springs and onward toward Erldunda, all the while measuring our forward progress against the remaining hours of sunlight. At a small outpost and caravan park called Mt Ebenezer the sun touched down. It looked like the perfect little place to call it a day, but the caravan park was closed for Shabbat (our private interpretation, as sunset marked the beginning of Shabbat – our first one on this trip not spent with a Jewish community). Mt Ebenezer was closed because an elder had died and tomorrow there were to be ceremonies, so passersby were being turned away that night so family and friends could privately pay their last respects in their own traditional indigenous way.

It was dark and cold by the time we reached Erldunda. We tried out the strategy of taking an unpowered site. We had access to the toilets and laundry, but we had to use the car battery for electricity, which meant running the engine a couple of times when the interior lights faded out. Razelle did some laundry of the most important items and used their coin operated driers. I sat with her in the penetrating cold while she read a paperback novel and I composed another blog entry. We went to bed in a frigid caravan and huddled against the chill in our sleeping bags and extra clothing. I know it was below freezing during the night, but how far below I couldn’t say. 

Australia day 11

7 July

Time to say goodbye to Alice Springs. We turned in our gate key at the registration office, took a few photos of ourselves looking like a MacDonnell Ranges Sheila and Bloke (there is a sign at the entrance you can stand behind with a cut out that you can insert your face into to look like the character mentioned), then we drove off for Uluru/Ayer's Rock. After yesterday's "short" 200 km side trip, the road to Uluru was going to be a long one.

It took us about 2 hours to reach Erldunda. (I could never pronounce this place name without sounding it out slowly – too many d's.) We stopped for petrol here. For the next several days this will be our new "dictum of the desert": Never pass a petrol station without topping up the tank. From this turnoff we had 160 km to go to get to Curtin Springs, where there is a caravan park we thought we'd shelter in for the night, after visiting Uluru.

It's interesting driving these long stretches of highway to a World Heritage Site. Almost everyone else we encountered was traveling in a recreational vehicle, like we were. The different kinds we saw advertised when we planned this trip were all represented on this highway. At times the edges of the road were ragged and encountering another wide recreational vehicle was a bit un-nerving. At other times there were no other vehicles in sight from horizon to horizon.

I noticed a lot of small round yellow melons beside the road. We have them in Israel. I very carefully sampled the tiniest fleck of the flesh of one of these and found it to be extremely bitter, as I had expected. Further along there were some that were larger, green with pale dappled spots, and rugby-ball shaped. I collected two of these to learn about later.

When we reached Curtin Springs we found a lot of other like-minded people. There was plenty of room to accommodate all the caravans that might show up, but only nine powered sites, and none of these were available. The prices were outrageously high, but Razelle had her heart set on having some amenities so we paid for a budget room (shared facilities outside the room).

The rest of the way to Ayer's rock Razelle sensed that I was holding onto some bottled up thoughts. I finally vented them. I asked her what we were paying for that we didn't already have with this caravan? We had the luxury of free accommodations at that location and we were spending a large sum for no purpose. That's not how she saw it and we had a great difference of opinion that colored the rest of the day.

We passed the Yulara Resort just before the entrance without stopping. I wanted to get us into the park in a timely manner in case something was starting that we didn't want to miss. At the entrance we learned that it cost 25 dollars a piece to get in, but the entrance ticket was good for unlimited re-entry for the next 3 days. We'd come this far; we weren't going to argue about the price. Both these factors (the room waiting for us 100 km back and a 3-day park entry ticket) came into play when we rethought our immediate plans.

I found a parking spot for our caravan, gave Razelle our entrance tickets to keep safe in her backpack and then went with her to the Cultural Centre to see its displays. I myself didn't go in, but I thought I saw Razelle do so. Instead I went to the Administration Building to find out where the nearest location was for buying petrol. We may have been able to make it all the way back to Curtin Springs, but what if we set out from the park too late to find anything open? Sunset at Uluru is the most important time to see its features. There is a special viewing area just for this purpose. I couldn't enjoy this if I didn't have the security of a topped up tank.

I was told that the nearest petrol station was at the resort just outside the park entrance. I couldn't leave the park and re-enter without my ticket, which Razelle had in her backpack, and when I searched for her in every room at the Cultural Centre (the supermarket story all over again) she was nowhere to be found! After three passes I widened the search and finally found her outside, scanning the parking lot watching for me, rather than inside and experiencing live demonstrations of indigenous culture presented by the indigenous people themselves.

My state of mind was not the best by this point. I got my ticket from Razelle, left the park, bought petrol and returned with the topped up tank. By then, the demonstrations were over, the smokey didgeridoo-shaping fire was now a smoldering ash pit, the spear and boomerang shaping area was now a pile of wood shavings, the native art corner was now a few spots of spilled paint. The indigenous demonstrators I'd glanced at while searching for Razelle earlier had gone. But at least Razelle got to see it, and I saw something of it in passing while searching for her. My tank was topped up, and that was what was important.

We now drove to the monolith. Uluru/Ayer's rock is a lump of rock rising out of a broad flat region of Australia called the Red Centre. With a keen eye you can see that Uluru is upended so that its layers, created horizontally once upon a time, are now vertical.

Razelle and I parked in a car park at the base of this rock, where people can climb up it while holding onto a hand rail. We took pictures of each other (and of our stuffed toy monkey). Then, intrigued by the beauty of the juxtaposition of rock and foliage and with Razelle's blessing, I wandered off along a trail that follows Uluru's base, taking photograph after photograph during the last of the daylight and as the sun set.

Again I was at one with nature and my camera was an extension of my sense of sight. I was transfixed by the moment as Uluru glowed redder with each passing moment as the sun descended toward the horizon.


I returned to Razelle after being gone the better part of an hour to find her once again in tears because I had not left her the keys and she couldn't get into the caravan. We've got to come up with a modus operandus to keep this sort of thing from happening again and again.

In the dark, now, we drove out of the park, past the resort (I don't know if the petrol station was still open or not by this hour) and along the 100 km of empty highway back to our room at Curtin Springs. Before we climbed out of the caravan we cooked a meal. Razelle made scrambled eggs and mushrooms for herself; I made rice and tuna in cream of mushroom sauce. We'd had a long day. We left cleaning up the cookery for the morning.

Australia day 10

6 July

Today we flew in a hot-air balloon. How could we self-respectingly go around the world and not do the Phileas Fogg and Passepartout thing? (Which of us was whom is still up in the air.) We had to get up at 4:00 AM to do this, so we could be picked up at 5:15 AM at our campground's front gate. By the time the bus came for us another group of high-school kids and their accompanying adult filed out to the front gate and got on their bus, too. We headed out into the dark, past the airport, along a bumpy dirt road to an empty field where the bus stopped and the basket being carted along behind the bus and a large bundle on the same cart were placed on the ground. Our pilot, a Dutchman named Franz, kept us entertained with witty banter all the way out there (he told us he liked to talk because he was full of hot air, which was an asset in his line of work). Our bus driver was Rom, a tall muscular Aussie with a few piercings in the top of his ear. He added a few zingers of his own to the banter when Franz paused for (hot) air.

From a show of hands among the passengers, it turned out I was the only person on the bus who'd ever gone up in a hot-air balloon before. Hmmm. What does that say about me?

In the pitch dark two balloons were inflated – ours and the one for the high-school group. I was able to photograph their balloon from our balloon during our flight. Getting into the basket was difficult for Razelle, so muscular Rom helped her and a very heavy-set woman up and in. They couldn't permit Razelle to use her special tripod cane/seat (insurance issues) so Razelle stood the whole hour wedged in between the large woman and me (Razelle couldn't slump to the floor anyway in such close quarters and we were warmer this way from body heat. We lifted off the ground a few inches, floated a few feet and settled back on the ground. We could now say we'd been airborne. Then, with a roar of the flame-making contraption we headed skyward and watched the ground fall away below us. The other balloon floated ahead of us as the dawn brightened.

Before the sun peaked over the rim of the earth we saw our first kangaroo below, bounding a little, hunkering down, bounding some more, etc. Wildlife sighting duly accomplished – as promised – we stayed airborne the better part of an hour before the second and only other kangaroo put in an appearance down there in "the bush". The outback has far fewer features than I had hoped. The view from above it all didn't vary much, but it was an experience not to be missed, just the same. Franz did a good job explaining the features we saw and the dynamics of balloon flight.

Once we were back on the ground, Razelle was helped out of the basket by Rom, who carried her in his strong capable arms (this ride thrilled Razelle more than the balloon ride! – she considered this the fulfillment of one of the items on her personal bucket list) and gently set her down on terra firma.

Next, we all had a wonderful time working as a team squeezing the air out of the balloon and stuffing it back into its carrying bag. Franz broke out the champagne and we celebrated our flight with a breakfast of cheese and crackers, peanuts, apples, cookies and granola bars and canned coffee. On the ride back to our campground, Franz told us he is known by the nickname "the Flying Dutchman." I should have seen that coming. We wanted a souvenir T-shirt for Razelle, but they hadn't brought one her size along. Franz promised to bring one her size out to our campground within the hour after he dropped off the other passengers at their hotel. It took him a lot longer than that, but he did bring it eventually.

We still had a nice chunk of the day left to explore the region. We headed west from Alice Springs into West MacDonnell National Park. There are several beauty spots down the road in there. The first we came to that interested me was Standley Chasm. The short walking trail into the chasm goes over river stones (like the trail into Ein Avdat, near Sde Boker, for those are familiar). Razelle couldn't take such a trail so I went in alone. It was an enchanting place with a babbling brook, ancient cycad plants, ghost gums and a defile between high red rock walls that narrowed dramatically into a cool shady chasm at the trail head. I was in such a state of contentedness when I returned to the caravan and to Razelle in less than an hour. Razelle, however, was not a happy camper. I'd left her the keys to the caravan so she could lock it up and leave if she wanted, but she didn't know how to close the open windows and remained a captive of the caravan until I returned. She thought she'd need to start the engine to close the windows, but all she needed to do was turn the key a bit without starting. Now she knows.

We drove further west, past Ellery Creek Big Hole (we only took a picture of the highway sign because the name had a certain "charm") and then we took the access road to Serpentine Gorge. This access road is 5 km of rough unpaved track. After only 1 km I turned back. I didn't want to harm the rental vehicle. By this juncture, having learned my lesson well from the Pinnacles experience (running low on fuel with no supply available after a certain hour) I decided that venturing any further from Alice Springs was folly. We were 99 km from Alice and it was far enough. We drove all the way back, enjoyed the view of the desert, filled up the tank with a fresh supply of petrol upon reaching Alice Springs and then returned to our caravan park. It was the first time we'd set up for the night before it was dark. All kind of birds greeted us at out campgrounds. It's practically a bird sanctuary, but you don't realize that when you arrive after dark.