Day 4 - Alice Springs

Next morning (Thursday) we woke up to the sun rising over a desert landscape - a beautiful red sun. The change of landscape between Katherine and the approach to Alice Springs was amazing.

In Alice we chose to take the shuttle bus into town instead of taking any of the "whistle-stop" tours.

The collection in this photo is some of the things I bought - mainly fabrics with aboriginal designs from a fabric shop just off Todd Mall. The rhythm sticks were from a gallery. I rather like the idea of using the designs on the rhythm sticks as the basis of a strippy applique quilt. (Another future project).

I also bought a book about the art of Dorothy Napangardi - "Dancing Up Country". I couldn't afford any of her original works, so this was a good compromise.

(Did I tell you that on the way back from Litchfield National Park we stopped at the "Didg Hut", and there I bought a very small piece of aboriginal art and a book on the subject. I'll have to take a photo and post it separately).


Still in the same gallery I bought some postcards of aboriginal art to go with the ones I'd bought in January at the National Gallery. I think the aboriginal art appeals to me for its very graphic quality - any of these pieces could so easily be loosely interpreted as a quilt.

(Also in this display on my cubicle wall at work is a Degas sketch, a close up photo of a caterpillar on a grevillea flower, and one of my textile postcards).

Back on the train, we were again greeted with a lovely glass of iced tea, and then lunch. We spent the afternoon watching the changing landscape through our picture window before another delicious 3-course meal and good wine.

Overnight the train seemed to stop several times, sometimes for several hours. (Later I confirmed this when I found a detailed schedule for the train. It stops to allow the long goods trains heading north to pass it).

Day 3 (evening) The Ghan

When we returned to The Ghan from Katherine Gorge a lovely glass of iced tea each was waiting, and we watched the "floor show".
Outside our window was this pool of water, and a jabiru (yes ... I know it's had a name change) along with various other water birds.









The cast of water birds grew, so we had two jabiru (jabirus?), a couple of egrets and various others.
Then a raptor arrived, which all the others totally ignored. He swooped a few times from a fence post across to a small tree - its' the blob in the twiggy tree in the centre foreground.
This is when we missed Paul's camera with it's 10x zoom!





Once the train got going we spent some time in the lounge car, and watched the scenery going by - still tropical top end, as we headed south from
Katherine.
After dinner we returned to our room, which had been converted from sitting room to bedroom in our absence. It was as comfortable as it looks, and the bed was quite high - pretty much the same height as the window-sill.
We put the venetian blinds up and the next morning we watched a red sun rise over the desert landscape - beautiful. (But too early to get up and hunt for the camera to try to capture it).

Continuing the tour of our space on the Ghan, this is a photo through the bathroom door, showing the basin and the shower door. The shower is a full-sized shower (90cm x 90cm?)
You have to ignore our towels and the bathmat. This photo was actually taken on the next evening. The bathroom started off beautifully neat with towels etc. all folded on their rack.
The showerscreen, complete with bathmat, is reflected in the mirror over the basin - it's so hard to take a sensible photo in a space with lots of mirrors.








And the other end of our en-suite. That's another mirror above the toilet, reflecting the towels (again) and me taking the photo.