Tourist Confusing Sunsets in Alice Springs
The full moon is bigger in the desert. At least that’s what the denizens of open spaces say, those lucky enough to be spared the daily fluctuations of coastal climes. In the desert the full moon is bigger.
The moon in Alice Springs ascends from behind the MacDonnell Ranges that line and ring the town. And the moon is indeed big – a luminous orange orb that can entrance an eye for those first few minutes of movement in evening sky. The spattered scatterings of the Milky Way draw back at its grasp of nights’ undraped velvet curtain, like the skirts of the hills pulled up to the heavens.
Just beyond the ranges that hem this odd desert oasis, through the Heavitree Gap that opens for the road to the “south” (as in, everywhere else that isn’t north of Australia’s arid centre) and out by the road to the airport, nestles a dirt road that is oft un-driven by the passing hordes. An ideal hard-yakka sojourn far from the madding, backpacking, rubber-necking crowds. Well, most of the crowd without luxury 4WDs, as we discovered.
