A soggy Red Centre

After another day and night spent on the train we arrived in Alice Springs on New Year’s Day. We had made some prior arrangements to stay with a family on their small farm; it was a family of four this time. We stayed with them until the 9th January when Lisa’s parents were due to arrive in town.

The weather turned very ugly while we were in Alice

It actually ended up being one of the wettest summers Alice Springs has had in ages. A week into our stay in Alice and the rains came in heavy. It rained for about two weeks, sometimes light but other times really heavy.

This was a massive thing for the people of Alice; one of their rivers even started to flow, so we all rushed out to look at the river in the storm. I stayed firmly seated in the car. Someone put it into perspective for me, "imagine if a river in England dried up completely because it was so hot, wouldn't you all rush out to see it?" I nodded.

One of our jobs was to feed the ducks, chickens and geese

Again it was a case of four hours of work per day for a free bed and meals, which worked out really well in terms of saving money on our trip. It also meant we could learn a few things from the locals, which you don't get when staying in hostels.

These are a special breed of chooks called Silkies

Lisa collecting seeds. We did this for a few hours, in between digging up buffel grass 

The first proper hole I've ever dug! This was home to their mango tree, which was actually eaten up by their ducks and geese overnight...

The family we stayed with had a pretty good setup on their land. This included a variety of chickens, three pigs, geese and ducks. Water conservation being a big thing in the middle of a semi-arid desert, people have to get creative.

Because of all the rain in Alice, they went out and bought this big water tank

We helped to move this massive water tank around to the side of their home to collect the rain water

I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it's a very clever way of making nutrient-rich water

A worm farm!

They had an aquaponics tank to create nutrient-rich water from fish poo, three water tanks to collect whatever rainfall they could (we helped install the largest of these), and a worm farm for creating more nutrient-rich soil.

They had about five circular allotments, which contained a variety of fruits and vegetables. To nourish these areas, they moved their hens over areas and then rotated them to a different spot once they had been sufficiently poo'd upon.

We had a really nice time with this family, looking after their kids whenever the needed and going swimming in their neighbour’s pool. 

We had an encounter with a brown snake, which was discovered in his garden. Brown snakes are highly venomous, in fact deadly if provoked.

A brown snake, or Mulga, is one of the deadliest in Australia

We had to be extra careful with this one... I was trying to hold back the excitement

Red-back spiders are a common occurrence in the Northern Territory, and can give a rather nasty bite that will likely put you in hospital for treatment. These spiders have a tendency for hiding under things; we actually encountered quite a few staying where we did. They can be quite small, but would give a pretty serious bite if provoked.

I was helping out our host with clearing some things from his driveway, when I was about to pick up a large container. I thought it would be wise to check under the handles first, fortunate that I did because there were red-backs under both handles.

Red backs are small and nasty spiders... treatment is required if bitten

We cleaned up this black leather couch, which was home to 3 or 4 red backs

We found this red back spider under the handle (above). This was huge! Definitely glad I wasn't bitten by this 

The left handle had one about the size of a fifty pence piece. We took some photos, and from then on, I checked everything over twice before I picked it up...

When it was time to say goodbye to Alice we were quite relieved that we no longer had to do any chores for a while. We were dropped off at Alice Spring’s airport to meet up with Lisa’s parents. 

We hired a car for a road trip to Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kata Tjuta and also Kings Canyon. When her parents arrived it was raining, and was cold enough to be mistaken as an English summer. Joy!

We went on the long drive to Kings Canyon to stay there for a few nights. During a time of unforgiveably bad weather, the roads up to Kings Canyon were closed off! Which meant we never got to see it in the end. 

Weather reports were hopeful for our journey down to Uluru and Kata Tjuta. Lucky for us, after a solid week of rain, the sun shone its sunny face and everything was good again for our stay at the national park's resort.

A postcard picture of Uluru at sunset

I like this one, framing Kata Tjuta (far distance to the left) and Uluru

Group shot!

Kata Tjuta means 'many heads'

We had a ranger guided tour in the morning around Uluru

Coming to the end of our stay in Uluru-Kata Tjuta national park

We met back up with Mike and Gabi down in Adelaide. They flew there from Alice and we had yet another enduring journey on The Ghan. In Adelaide we picked up the motorhome which would take us across the south and along The Great Ocean Road up to Sydney.