On Our way to Central Australia

People told us we were crazy (some still do) but we decided to drive to Central Australia. People told us we should fly. "It's a long drive" we were told. It was a really long drive, we covered 5500 km in 12 days, but we came to Australia to see the country, not the economy seating on a Jetstar flight. We rented a pop-up caravan that we towed from Adelaide to Alice Springs. It certainly made life interesting - it was very warm all day and at night we froze our tushies off. It was the middle of winter!




Heading down the hill into Adelaide. It was absolutely crazy windy that day - I'm wondering how many of the "emergency arrester beds" were used.

Our home away from home for 12 nights. The sleeping area is where the windows are and then there was some room for a small table and some stools oon the floor. That came in handy when we huddled around the propane lamp at night trying to keep warm.

Our front yard/ kitchen area. Gourmet meals cooked and enjoyed here. One thing campgrounds in Australia offer is a barbeque area where you can cook your food. Kennedy is standing in front of our handy counter area.

The caravan came with this lovely loft bedroom reached by a small ladder. We took loads of extra blankets and we used every one of them.

Heading out of Port Augusta and onwards to the "Red Center"!

Beautiful sunsets almost every night.

We passed lots of wind farms. They seem to be quite common place up there.
This is pretty much the scenery we saw - for many, many days....
A roadhouse! Spuds Roadhouse to be exact. These were always a welcome sight cause it meant you could buy gas, food and drinks. It also meant that there were other people out there - which was very comforting some days....

...cause once you left Spuds this is what you saw.

The girls decided that this was the perfect place to sit and eat some lunch at Spud's.
Back on the road after lunch. Apparently we're taking a little of the local wildlife with us on our windshield.

This is only the onset as it was such a huge trip that it really needs to be split into parts. We covered a lot of territory and saw a lot of great things that I can't do justice to in a single blog. At this point we were only beginning to understand the charm and mystique of the center, but we were hooked!

The Force is With Us...

Imagine our excitement when we discovered that there was a Star Wars exhibit at Scienceworks in the city, a mere 45 minutes drive from here. Imagine that you were a young child when the original Star Wars movie came out in 1977 and that you have seen all the Star Wars movies since then and now that you are just a teeny bit older than that, you still love the movies, as does your 7 year old daughter. You would go check out the exhibit! And that is exactly what we did. Everything in the exhibit was used in the movies - Luke's landspeeder from the first movie, many lightsabers, costumes and other bits. It was really interesting, although I must admit that finding out how they did some of the stunts and scenes was like finding out what all your Christmas presents are before you open them.



X wing fighter. It measures about 1m x 1m. Guess it had to be that small to make all those turns.
















Chewbacca and Han Solo. Harrison Ford was obviously not that big because the costume is quite small.

This looks like some sort of homemade plumbing thingy.

I had no idea that there were so many different types of lightsabers in the movie.

Darth Vader. This one was Alex's favorite. She loves Darth Vader. Although when she asked Santa for a lightsaber she wanted a blue one like Luke's.

Storm Trooper.

Yoda this is. Cute he is.

A Jawa. They were the ones that sold C3PO and R2D2 to Luke's uncle. If you google "Jawa" it describes a Jawa as a small rodent like native of Tatooine. Doesn't really help...

Snow Trooper from when Luke got lost in the blizzard on Hoth.

Wampa from Hoth.

Alex with Darth Vader and Padme Amidala. Or for those not in the know - Alex with Darth Vader and his Mom.

Kennedy with C3PO and R2D2. Hard to imagine there were people in those costumes.

Luke's landspeeder from the first movie. It was built over the frame of a 3 wheeled British Car and then the tires were movie magicked out of the scenes. Unfortunately that info sort of ruined things for me...

The Millenium Falcon. It measures about 1.5 metres in diameter and weighs enough that it took 3 men to lift it. It was manouvered in the scenes by wires that were attached to it's frame.

For a group of Star Wars fan we left the exhibit quite excited. It was really cool to be able to see all the stuff from the movies and to get an idea of how it all worked. Items like Darth Vaders helmet look like George Lucas paid a visit to his local Home Depot to put the costumes together. It was really odd to see regular things like tubing and duct tape on something that looked so spectacular on the big screen. As an adult you it's like finding out a magicians secret and may make me look at the movie differently I'm not so sure that a 7 year old will care.