Day 3 - Monday 25th May

We could hear people stirring at about 6am because the first breakfast started at 7am. We’d opted for the second sitting so we could sleep in.

When we opened the blinds in our cabin at about 7:15am, we were in the outback and the sun was just rising over the horizon. Although the sky was clear, it had been raining overnight and so the red soil was a darker colour than usual.

Prior to breakfast, we joined Annie and Paul in the lounge area for coffee. By breakfast time at 8:30, we were feeling quite hungry and looking forward to a good feed. As were finishing breakfast at about 9:30, we crossed the border between South Australia and the Northern Territory. The sky had changed from clear blue to high cloud. Later in the morning, it was back to clear blue.

Back in our cabin, we listened to a recording by the late Bud Tingwell giving a commentary on the journey from Adelaide to Alice Springs.

The train must have been running ahead of schedule because they started calling people for breakfast at 11:30am. We were in the second sitting and it was a rush to finish our lunch in time before we reached Alice Springs.

The shuttle bus took us to the Crowne Plaza Hotel which is on the other side of the Todd River from the town centre. As you might expect, the Todd River was completely dry.

We'd been thinking about the places we wanted to visit around Alice Springs. There are various tours you can take but we decided to hire a car to give us flexibility to go where we wanted when we wanted. Easier said than done. Avis was closed in the city, Budget had no cars and Hertz didn't answer the phone. Avis and Budget might have had cars at the airport but we had no way to get there and their opening hours didn't suit us.

We found a brochure for a local hire company. They were great because they not only had cars available but they came to the hotel to pick us up and gave us lots of advice on what to visit and where to go for dinner. This was an example of excellent small business service versus large company indifference.

We drove into town and walked down Todd Mall. A few blocks away, I visited Book City who used to be one of my customers for DuoSoft.

For dinner, we took the advice of the car hire company and had dinner at the Thai restaurant in our hotel. He said it 's the best restaurant in town. When we were having pre-dinner drinks, we bumped into two couples who had been on the Ghan with us from Adelaide.