It's Saturday so it must be Alice Springs. After 19 hours on the Ghan and 1000 miles from Adelaide we have arrived in a town called Alice. (I've been waiting to be able to type that for ages). The Ghan train ride is great fun - well it is if you travel first class anyway! We had our own twin berth cabin with ensuite shower & toilet, a dining car and a lounge car just for the first class passengers, with all meals included. All very old fashioned and rather romantic (with a small r). We even played cricket down the centre of the lounge car with a bat and ball fashioned by the Aileen, the stewardess - and were presented with "The Ashes" - a shot glass filled with authentic outback red soil! Pictures of which will follow when I get somewhere with faster internet than here. So at least some Englishmen will take the Ashes home with them anyway............
There were lots of interesting people on the train - lots of English, including a John Oliver lookalike. He even played as well & only gave up a few years ago. Now he's an umpire in Scotland & does the Scottish national team games.
We've picked up our hire car and plan to go out to the rock tomorrow, starting first thing. Its a fair way but we should be able to do it all in one day. Moz wants to ride a camel while we're here, but I'll leave him to do that alone.
We pick the train up again on Monday at about 4pm and travel on to Darwin where there are tropical storms at the moment. Should make taking off a bit interesting!