Tuesday, December 19, 2023
I'm actually writing this blog on Dec. 20 - never got a chance to blog last night but that's because most of our day yesterday was spent in transit from Darwin back to Alice Springs. As I mentioned in a previous post, our trip to Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef was cancelled due to weather from Cyclone Jasper (flooding). So, after a mad scramble, our itinerary was changed. We had the morning 'free' in Darwin on 12/19 and were asked to have our bags outside our door by 12:45 p.m. and be down in the lobby by 1 p.m. We left at 1:30 pm, drove to the Darwin airport, had about a 90-minute wait and then boarded a flight BACK to Alice Springs. A maneuver I have come to call the "Boomerang effect." We got off the plane in Alice Springs about 6 p.m. and boarded a bus out to the Earth Sanctuary. The Earth Sanctuary is located out in the outback in one of the world's designated dark places for watching the stars. We got a tour of the place from "Dan" (one of three brothers that came out to the area about 25 years ago and decided to stay). They host groups for tours and stargazing and demonstrations of life in the bush. We got a demonstration (with help from Belinda in our group) how to make "damper bread." All it takes is self-rising flour, a bottle of beer and any extra ingredients you'd like to add - we added raisins (called sultanas) to ours. You knead the dough for about 3-5 minutes and pop the dough in a can and either bury it in an ember fire (we couldn't do that because it's so hot and dry right now they're under a fire advisory) or pop it in an oven at about 220 degrees F. for 40 minutes and Voila! - Damper bread.
We were also treated to a lovely gourmet outdoor dinner of sausages, chicken, and/or steak, roasted potatoes, roasted pumpkin wedges, salad and coleslaw. After dinner we did some star gazing (beautiful clear skies with loads of stars) and then came back to the tents for dessert of sticky pudding with cream, and a chance to try the damper bread that Belinda helped knead. Not too bad - just like soda bread and with a really crunchy crust.
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| Boomerang - back to Alice Springs Airport |
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Arriving at Earth Sanctuary outside Alice Springs
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| Spectacular sunset at Earth Sanctuary |
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| Stars in the night sky at Earth Sanctuary |
Our evening ended around 9 p.m. and we took a short ride from Earth Sanctuary to the DoubleTree hotel in Alice Springs for our overnight accommodations. The best thing about the DoubleTree is that they have a self-service laundry on site. So, after getting our room keys, I gathered all of our stinky (and I mean REALLY stinky) laundry from the last five days and headed over to the laundry. Several others in our group had the same idea. I did find 2 washing machines open (charge of $6.15 AU per load) and put our clothes in. They also had 4 dryers, but 1 of them was out of service. So, by the time our clothes were out of the washers, there weren't any open dryers. By the time we got our clothes into/out of the dryer it was 11:30 p.m. We grabbed clothes, went back to our room and, after washing my face and setting up for the night with pajamas and plugging in my phone (as an alarm clock) it was midnight before I was finally in bed! A long day, indeed!
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