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Alice Springs. 'The Alice'. Dead of Winter. 25 degrees centigrade. Middle of nowhere. A town without charm. Capital of the outback. The largest population of aboriginals in Australia (15,000). The first thing to hit me was the smell. I had never smelt that strange admixture of dust, dirt and alien vegetation, but somehow I knew it was the smell of the Outback. Home.

Alice. Difficult to erase from memory. The smallest and largest cross-roads in the world. A hub for outback adventurers. Everyone is passing through - stopping off from journeys so long they beggar belief.

The Alice exists only because it was a convenient half-way point between the North and South of the continent during the laying of the overland telegraph line in the 1870s. Unimaginably - the only road to and from Alice passable by an ordinary car was laid in 1987! Until then all travelers were over landers - bouncing along the 1500 mile dirt track from Darwin or Adelaide! To this day, routes to any other destinations have to made for thousands (yes thousands) of kilometers over land in a four wheel drive - with all the dangers that entails. Nothing was going to stop me.

The town is named after the wife of the guy who sunk the first well into the spring near the Todd river. Mike and I walked to the spring which is still home to the original hand pump. The Todd river is almost always dry - but ground water runs for most of the year and can always be tapped into by sunken wells - or digging a few feet with a shovel!

My eagerness could hardly be contained. After a drink or two in the Todd Tavern on day one, in the self-same spot that my fellow desert-rat Edward Abbey chose as his temporary watering-hole in this oasis in the desert, I made plans for my excursion into the greatest wilderness on Earth.

The Outback is so large that it defies belief and cannot even be understood with the imagination. Effectively only small patches of coastal areas in Australia are inhabited. The rest is larger than the USA and is in reality terra incognita. Whole stretches of it have never been explored. Nobody, perhaps not even the aboriginals know what is out there. The Simpson desert south of Alice was named only relatively recently after the washing machine company that sponsored an expedition to see just what lay out there beyond the dirt track. This is no place for the foolhardy.

The obligatory jaunt from Alice to Uluru (Ayers rock) and Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) is but an amateur excursion into the bush at 1000 kilometers round trip. A bitumen loop road known as the Larapinta drive has been constructed especially for the trip. My traveling buddy Mike and I decided to get the obligatory bush visit on the bitumen out of the way before venturing into the outback proper.

We hit the road in our 4 X 4 southward for the treasures of the Red Centre of Australia. It's really that colour - the earth coloured through the oxidization (rusting) of metals in the dirt due to extreme heat. We choose a circuitous route over a 50 mile dirt track to take us past the sacred rock carvings at Ewinaga. These carvings are known to be at least 30,000 years old. May I point out that this means that the Ewinaga carvings were made a seriously long time before the first human writings or drawing were thought to have been possible. The aboriginals have been around for a very long time.

After slipping and sliding on the sandy road for a few hours we connected up with the main highway south for Uluru. Uluru is a sacred site site to the local Anangu Aboriginals and I guess one of the best known of the Australian icons. Mike and I wandered the circumference of the mighty flat-topped rock that rises a staggering 348 meters from the ground towards the sky. We stalled in the bush withstanding the incredible winter heat - waiting for a promising sunset during which the rock would appear to change colour from a light brown to scarlet red. We were not disappointed.

We camped that night in Yulara - the only campsite in the area. By the way you have no choice. Stories of wandering the outback in survival mode are complete nonsense. The entire place is owned by the aboriginals and is private - all of it. At no point in the continent can you simply leave the road and go for a wander. You are on private property. The aboriginals take personal responsibility for the welfare of everyone on their land and to trespass is to impose responsibility without their consent - a mark of disrespect. The same applies to Uluru itself. Hoards of tourists climb the rock every day against the wishes of the Aboriginals who repeatedly ask tourists to respect their sacred site. In fact, a more ethnically conscious form of tourist is now arriving at Uluru (the former settlers' name Ayer's rock now considered inappropriate) where they can buy badges proclaiming "I didn't climb Uluru".

Due to the realistic danger of hitting Kangaroos we could not drive after dark. The roadhouse culture in Oz has to be experienced to be believed. Trapped in these beer oases in the desert are hoards of outback travelers with nothing to do but drink beer and share stories of their travel adventures until the sun rises again the next morning. The roadhouse are also often life-lines to the Aboriginals who often rely on them as a source of meagre supplies. They don't need much. Living off the fruits of the desert, such as desert tomato, wild grapefruit, desert plums and witchety grubs, the Aboriginals want only to be left live the life they have always lived in the peace of the outback, hunting, gathering, slashing and burning.

Only 30 kilometers from Uluru, Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) is a strange series of red rock formations that pepper the desert landscape. These perfectly smooth rock formations have been shaped over time by wind and rain so that the entire landscape looks as smooth as velvet. Towering red walled rocks are scattered on either side of the scenic drive casting eerie shadows down on insignificant passers-by.

King's Canyon is the final obligatory visit in the Red Centre. As usual, to make life interesting and difficult (the two need not always be associated) Mike and I wandered the Mereenie Loop on our exploration of the area. This loop of several hundred miles requires a pass to be granted by the Aboriginals. We duly secured one in advance in Alice and so got to see King's Canyon the hard way. Along the trail we saw a wild camel, that to this day is probably the most exciting wild-life spot I have ever had. I watched for what seemed like an hour ... slowly edging closer to this master of the arid-lands, descendant of the beasts of burden brought by the first settlers, until I had wandered dangerously off-road into Aboriginal land - breaking my permit. A tall and angry aboriginal appeared from the bushes ... he started motionless at me. He was in full paint and wielding a long stick or spear. I don't know what he was trying to tell me but only one interpretation seemed fitting. I got the hell out of there back to the jeep and away in a hurry.

King's Canyon is a well-trodden tourist destination but well worth the effort. It's a sheer, deep and beautiful canyon cut straight into the red rock of the desert and home to a humble fresh water stream deep in the canyon below. The walk around the canyons edge takes a couple of hours and is guaranteed to impress. The vistas from the top of the canyon walls to the desert plain beyond are some of the most dramatic I have ever seen.

But all of this was for amateurs. I couldn't wait to get off-road into the Simpson desert South East of Alice. An obvious destination as a starting point was Chambers Pillar which is roughly 75 miles from Alice into the northernmost part of the vast Simpson desert. Its a challenging four wheel drive over sand hills, through rivers and on rutted roads that would push any high-clearance jeep to its limits. Bring plenty of water. Chamber's Pillar was named by one of Australia's best known explorers, Stuart, who identified it as a recognizable natural stone pillar that could be used for directional purposes. The names of many early explorers are carved on the pillar that is accessible only to the determined outback travelers. A grand vista stretches back from the pillar along the dirt road through strange rock pinnacles and outcrops that characterize the edge of the Simpson desert.

I must admit to having been rather terrified at a few junctures on the Chamber's Pillar road. on one short stretch we transversed 28 sand hills that crossed our path. On another occasion we found ourselves climbing a rutted hill over sharp rocks that could puncture the underside of a jeep with anything less than the highest clearance. By most definitions our path hardly qualified as a road at all.

The Simpson Desert and the Red Centre don't immediately strike you as deserts in the stereotypical sense of the word. But they are arid. Not a drop of rain had fallen in the Red Centre for over a year when we arrived in July 2002. Sand dunes abound but they are covered by tenacious spinifex grass that is so hardy not even cattle can eat it! But more than anything it's the distances and the pristine nature of the Outback that most amazes.

Take your time. This one should be done properly.