Alice Springs

Leaving Melbourne, we took a 3 hour flight to Alice Springs dead in the center of Australia. It's a little town that time forgot and daylight doesn't improve. However, due to the similarity of the countryside to my Montana birthplace, it seemed nostalgically familiar and pleasant. In a small town with little to do, little things become bigger than life. We took a tour of the town in a small coach. The driver literally drove in circles, crossed and re-crossed his previous path to go from one stop to the next. Although the stops were less than a mile apart, it made the little town of 25,000 seem bigger. Mostly the attraction here is nature and the country surrounding the town.

This photos were taken in October, 2003 mostly using a Nikon E5000.

This was taken at an historic telegraph station. I have looked long and hard at this picture because it looks, well, fake. Like it was painted. In fact it's a real photo untouched by Photoshop. And I think I figured it out. Because Alice Springs gets less than 10 inches of rain a year, the trees have adapted to dry conditions by shrinking their leaves to minimize evaporation. These tiny, tiny leaves look painted on a backdrop to the wagon. See if I'm not wrong.
One of the side trips we took from Alice Springs was to Standley chasm. It was cut by a river that really only flows when it rains hard ... i.e. rarely. The river, now dry, is so dry nothing spoils the perfect white sand river bottom. The contrast between the white sand, and the red rocks of the chasm is quite stunning.
Along the sides of the chasm, nooks and crannies collect what little rain falls and provide a habitat for Flannel Flowers. They are pretty high up the chasm walls presumably because anything lower has been scrubbed clean by wild water when it does rain.
Along the side of the chasm, there are boulders the size of small cars that have been left behind by the water. Central Australia is so dry it is classified as desert. All the plants and animals are highly evolved to conserve water. Frogs, for example, dig into the mud of a drying riverbed and wait, sometimes years for the next rain. Then the reemerge, lay their eggs and start the next cycle of life.
$As we were hiking back down the chasm, I stumbled on a root that had fantastic patterns. Looking at it in the thumbnail, it looks a little like a face. It's really composed of many smaller faces. A face fractal. The scale of the root in the photo is perhaps 6 inches across.$
As we were hiking back down the chasm, I stumbled on a root that had fantastic patterns. Looking at it in the thumbnail, it looks a little like a face. It's really composed of many smaller faces. A face fractal. The scale of the root in the photo is perhaps 6 inches across.

We stayed in a perfectly serviceable hotel called the Alice Springs Resort. In a field behind it, there were rocks stuck in the ground. I liked the way they looked at sunset.