Last Day in the Northern Territories



2/13/06
Last Day in the Northern Territories
West MacDonnells

It was 105 F. today, as we spent the last day in the Northern Territories. We drove out to the West MacDonnell Mountain range just outside of town. The temperatures were just too high to subject our two year old to a hike, so we viewed most of the sights from the inside of the air conditioned car.
west Macdonnells

As we spent the last day in Alice Springs, I am left in awe of the age of this land. Australia has seen mountains has high as the Himalayas, but through eons of time, these mountains have been reduced to piles of sand. An inland ocean thrived and then dried into desert millions of years ago leaving windblown sands and salt lakes in its place. This land shows the survival of 500 million years, and the irony is we are managing to destroy it all in a matter of a few hundred years!
wrecked car

Being so close to Asia, Australians can really feel the appetite of a growing economy. This land is abundant in natural resources, but I hope it manages to survive the next great push to modernize much of Asia!

We also had a chance to see a relatively large amount of aboriginal people in this area compared to any other part of Australia. Their plight, and cultural difference to modern Australian living is not easy to understand, especially as a visitor. I seem to have more questions than answers to the issues, but I have learned a lot by listening to the different views from different Australians. The solutions are not simple, and the progress is slow, but I hope as the years go by, progress is made.

As I handed in the keys to the rental car, I racked up 2100 kilometers on the odometer. That’s 1300 miles of driving just to see some of the sights around Alice Springs. We would have driven further north if we had more time and stamina, but the heat was getting to all of us. I’m just glad we chose not to drive up from Adelaide!

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