The Middle... Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia

90% of Australians live on the coast; most urban people on the planet.

And then... there's the Northern Territory. About 225,000 live in this enormously big place. Consider that Darwin has 125.000 of those people and you begin to realize how few people live in this wide open place.

About 20,000 folks live in or near Alice Springs. This desert oasis is smack dab in the middle of the Northern Territory. You are still 1,500km from Darwin! And... you are in the outback, a remote desert, miles from anywhere---- nowhere basically!

Once at the end of the line, the desert oasis of Alice Springs, known as The Alice, is now merely the halfway point on the rail line that knits Australia together down the middle. It is the red center of the country where emptiness abounds. There's a beauty of desolation in central Australia, but after being in the town awhile, you realize just how isolated it is and how hard life must have been "back in the day" before all the modern conveniences arrived. We had a driver change there and spent 4 hours touring The Alice.

Our visits included the old jail which is now a Museum for Pioneer Women, a Reptile House where we were given a tour, a ride up to Anzac Hill, a place of memory for the Australian armed forces, and a tour out to where the original Alice Springs town started and the actual Alice Springs is located. Since they had gotten quite a bit of rain the previous weeks, the spring was running. That caused excitement in the town. The driver told us that the town was cut off for several days due to the high water. Those of us who live in AZ and see the high water mark warnings at the side of the roads can understand exactly what it means---- it can rain in the desert and instant floods happen. Enjoy a few things that we saw in The Alice.