The Red Center

We were very fortunate to travel to Australia's Red Center with Chris's parents while they visited us recently. Most people have heard of Uluru (Ayer's Rock), but there is far more to see in the hot, sandy middle of Australia than I had imagined. Given the distances between sights, we chose to join a bus tour that stopped at three distinctly and gorgeously different areas of central Australia. There are something like eight cattle stations between Alice and Uluru, which sounds like it should be a short trip - until you factor in that it's five hours drive and about 460 km, and each of those cattle stations cover a lot of ground.

Our driver and tour guide, Peter, was fabulous at sharing stories from the outback as we passed through this area. I can't begin to fit it all into one blog post, as we packed a tremendous lot into six days, so I'm hoping to write a few more posts about it while we're fixed in Townsville over the next week or so.

One of the surprises about the "red center" of Australia is the sheer number of wild camels wandering through the desert and the number of camel farms that are breeding stock. Camels were introduced to Australia as a reliable means of desert transport for early expeditions into the desert. Use of camels continued as the Overland Telegraph Line was built, connecting Adelaide to Darwin, and early travelers to Uluru rode the train as far north as possible before completing the remainder of the trip on camel. After motorized transportation became a viable means of access throughout the desert, camel herds were often released into the wild where populations are continuing to grow.

Our first stop on the southward trek was at a dusty roadside camel farm. The owners have maximized their location along the main highway by combining a small animal menagerie, a tea shop, and short camel rides or safaris. Small business diversification at work!

If only camels could talk - this guy looks like he has a story

The girls were keen to try a camel ride, and so Chris and I joined each of them on a camel. Mounting the kneeling camels was easy. However, we found ourselves tilting forward and backward with lots of giggling from the girls as the camels worked their way to standing under the direction of their camel herder.

Then, it was off on a short walk in the little paddock, and a run back to our dismount location.

Thanks to Chris's dad, Bob Beck, for photographs of the joyful camel riders!