Matt Down Under

The first part of my trip from Adelaide to Darwin went very well, today we arrived in Alice Springs where we will stay for at least one week. We started last Monday and travelled via Port Augusta, Coober Pedy, Uluru and Kings Canyon.

So far I’m really impressed with the outback, the colours of the landscape are amazing and I love the heat during the day. After leaving Adelaide, on the first few hundred kilometres the vegetation was very green, and especially at Uluru, the combination of blue sky, red rock and green grass around looked magnificent.

One of the downsides of this trip so far is, that our costs are a lot higher than expected. On some petrol stations we paid up to $2.16 per litre unleaded, that’s ¢90 more than in Adelaide, a total rip-off. It’s also pretty difficult to get any kind of fresh food. And $4 for half a litre of milk? Normal. We are so used to walking into Woolworths or Coles to find an abundance of fresh veggies and fruit and pay the lowest prices. In the outback, fresh fruit is about as precious and rare as petrol was for Mad Max. An exception is Alice Springs. Getting fresh food here is not a problem and prices are similar to the big cities.

Also due to lack of responses from Aboriginal spokes people and organisations, my travel companion had to change the topic of his research project and focus on Aboriginal art, where information is more more publicly available through numerous arts and culture centres. It’s disappointing, but not very surprising. It seems difficult to get anywhere without the proper connections when working with Aboriginal issues.

Apart from the colourful landscape there are a lot of other things I love about the outback, or the Northern Territory. The star-lit sky at night is amazing, so many stars it’s just beautiful. Also the fantastic sunsets and sunrises. Every day seems really spectacular here. I’ve also seen a lot of wildlife so far: swarms of Galahs and other beautiful birds, some dingoes, emus, a group of wild camels at Kata Tjuta, kangaroos, a large snake at the side of the road and probably a lot more.