Ayers Rock to Alice Springs by Coach

Tuesday afternoon - The bus ride from Ayers Rock to Alice Springs took about 6 hours and covered approximately 450 km (almost 300 miles). The first part of the ride was due east along the Lasseter Highway. Then we turned north onto the Stuart Highway. The entire drive was all strictly outback, and so any signs of civilization along the way were few and far between. The coach stopped a couple of times at places set up for travelers.

They are called "cattle stations" or "roadhouses", and consist of a gas (petrol) station and a convenience store. The highways are very narrow 2-lane roads. Rarely do you see any other traffic. Unlike the US, there aren't a lot of big trucks on the highway. In fact, we only saw 2 during our 6 hours of travel. We saw 2 "truck trains" - a tractor-trailer pulling 3 or 4 trailers behind it. According to Joe, they were about 135 feet long and had 16 axles and 62 tires. They were transporting fuel. So there is no widespread truck commerce like in the US. Can you imagine driving down a major interstate in the US and not seeing any trucks?! The scenery is all barren, desert scenery with a few scrub-brush trees.

The most interesting feature along the route was Mt. Conner, which is a large monolithic rock very similar to Uluru. In fact, it is so similar that some tourists have mistaken it for Uluru, prompting the locals to call it "Fooluru". We stopped to take pictures of Mt. Conner, and also climbed a small sand dune to view a huge dried salt flat. Because of the dryness of the desert, the water in the salt lakes has evaporated, leaving behind the halite and/or gypsum minerals (salt), giving a white-coated appearance to the dry lake bed.

Once we turned north onto the Stuart Highway, the scenery changed slightly. There were a few more trees, and they were slightly taller. There was more character to the landscape, with some topography - hills - but mostly still desert in character, the hills being covered by the typical desert scrub-brush trees. Eventually the MacDonnell Ranges came into view to the west. We crossed many rivers and creeks; however, they were all dry beds - just another indication of the desert environment of this area. We were told later by a local that "Once you've seen the river flow three times, you're entitled to call yourself a local." At times, they can get monsoonal rains, where not only the river beds fill up, but the Stuart Highway becomes flooded. Once we arrived in Alice Springs, we went to eat at the hotel restaurant and waited a very long time for our food to arrive. This has been our experience every time we've dined out in Australia. Apparently since there is no tipping here, there is no incentive for good service.