Alice Springs Archives -

13th – 18th May 2025

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday – Alice Springs

Three days in Alice Springs isn’t nearly enough particularly when we really needed to clean the motorhome, restock, refuel, carry out some repairs, and finally relax. Alice is a lovely town. Its isolation means everything you might need is conveniently clustered within a small area — hardware stores, hiking and camping supplies, well-stocked supermarkets (though eggs were in short supply!), and mechanical services. We even found two restaurants that turned out to be gems – an Indonesian and a Vietnamese.
Thankfully we’ve had no mechanical issues, but will need to replace the filter on the drinking water tap.

Alice Springs from Anzac Hill, looking over the town to the West MacDonnell Ranges.

For those not in the know, the flags are the Australian flag, the Northern Territory flag, the Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday

Palm Valley, another highly recommended destination, is 123km SW of Alice in Finke National Park. To get there you travel through Hermannsburg and Namatjira country. Albert Namatjira (1902–1959), an Arrernte landscape artist born in Hermannsburg, captured the breathtaking beauty of this region in his distinctive paintings.

This is the home Albert built for his family after he was granted Australian citizenship — the first Aboriginal person to receive it. (Pause a moment to consider the irony of this.) Despite achieving significant success and international recognition as an artist, restrictions placed on Aboriginal people at the time meant the government controlled his finances, preventing him from leaving the legacy he intended for his family.

Finke National Park is named after the Finke River, the oldest river in the world based on studies of its geology. Now it only runs a few times a year. Our drive into Palm Valley necessitated us driving along its very rocky bed.

After settling in to camp we walked back here to do the Mpaara Walk amongst all these amazing landforms.

We decided this rock looked like a grouper (the fish!)

The views just kept coming. Incredible country.

Back at camp, we enjoyed a cold drink while admiring the brilliant colours of the mountain as the sun set.

Next morning we embarked on the 13.5km moderately hard Palm Valley and Mpulungkinya Track. It is possible to drive 4 km closer, but the road is in very poor condition and 4K just isn’t worth damaging our motorhome for.

Steve doing some arty photography. Palm Creek

Palm Valley is named after the rare Red Cabbage Palm, a species found nowhere else but this valley. This photo shows a young plant, while the palms in the following images are fully grown, showcasing the mature form of this unique species.

I took this photo after a lot of climbing got us to the top, then the arrow just pointed down, seemingly over the cliff edge! Yikes!

It was a lovely walk alongside Palm Creek, then up and over the hill and back down again to follow the creek back to the trailhead. One tricky section had me balancing on a very narrow ledge clinging to the rock face by my fingertips while Steve put pressure on my back to prevent me falling. What one does, hey!

Next morning we headed back to Alice Springs to restock and prepare to head north.

Sunday 14th – Wednesday 17th

Happy Mother’s Day.

Alice Springs is a town I like. It isn’t a large town, but because it’s remote it has to provide everything in one compact location for its residents and tourists. Everything you’d find in a large city is here, within a 10 minute drive of wherever you are.

Alice from the Anzac Hill lookout.

We checked in to the Big 4 Caravan Park ($48/n – yikes!) for 3 nights. Steve and I went for a drive into town and a walk around Todd Mall -not much open, though an art shop had some truly beautiful aboriginal paintings … we can’t buy any more, we’ve run out of wall space. It was good to have a relaxing day.

Over the next few days we visited Anzac Hill for lovely views of Alice and the surrounding Ranges, the Royal Flying Doctor Service which has a very well presented hologram chronicling their history and describing their current service, and the Alice Springs Desert Park. The Desert Park was excellent – divided into the different regions experienced in this arid land with the plants and animals of each setting there. The rangers run informational sessions throughout the park every hour or so – we attended the ‘animal survival’ talk which took us into the nocturnal house (the bilby has got babies!), the indigenous traditional medicines talk and the free-flying bird displays. All fantastic. Steve is now treating a tiny wart he has on his finger with ‘Dead Finish’ and we bought some traditional medicine for rubbing onto .. well, anything really – it seems to be a real cure-all. Hmm, I’ll let you know how it goes! (addit: it’s great for my arthritic finger joints!)

An owl in the free flying bird show. Alice Springs Desert Park

We also managed to visit Woolworths and Coles a few times, do some cooking and the inevitable washing! One evening at the caravan park they had an astronomer with his telescope giving a talk about the night sky. He was very good – we checked out Jupiter and identified all the constellations that were showing.

This was a live map showing the location of every Royal Flying Doctor plane. I’m just a bit concerned about the gap between Alice and Kalgoorlie – that gap is where we head next!

On Wednesday night we camped at Ruth and Bob’s home just outside Alice. Ruth and Bob are friends of my cousin Terry. Thanks for putting us in contact Terry – we had a wonderful time together and look forward to meeting them on the road sometime – they are very experienced remote-area travellers.

Steve, Denise, Ken, Wendy, Bob and Ruth. At Bob and Ruth’s home.

To see the photos from our time in Alice Springs. CLICK HERE.