1) Don't plan to spend much time in Alice Springs - you can fly into and/of out of Uluru. And either way, Qantas is the main operator (Tiger also flies to AS 3 days a week) so flights can get pretty expensive if you leave them to the last minute.
2) Tours are cheaper if booked in AS (rather than before you fly) where there is plenty of competition, and I suspect that virtually no notice is needed, at least outside the peak season.
3) Buy a fly net to keep the flies off your face! $5 or less in AS, I wish I'd bought one, at least for the Uluru base walk...
And something that nobody told me but fortunately we didn't miss:
4) Don't come all the way out here without going to Kings Canyon, because it beats Uluru hands down.
As soon as you get off the plane - and we got off the plane early in the morning as it's 1.5 hours behind Melbourne here - it is obviously very hot, and there are clearly a lot of insects. There are plenty of big beetles and grasshoppers that have been crushed by luggage trolleys inside the airport.
Unfortunately 'The Alice' is a fairly charmless place with not much going on, and a lot of locals sitting around on the kerb for want of anything better to do. Most of the town is reasonably modern but soulless and more spread out than you would like in a place this relentlessly hot. It presumably sees a lot of tourists passing through (you can fly direct to Uluru but tours commonly leave from here) but not many sticking around, and the ones who are here either have just got or are about to get up early for a tour.
On the positive side, the view from the top of Anzac Hill is worthwhile - a decent view of the scenic McDonnell Ranges that surround most of the town. Sadly we couldn't find anything else worthwhile to do in town. There are a couple of buildings of 'historical significance' - but, for example, the gaol is open only mornings, then only half the year, and is so tiny I find it hard to believe it would have been of much interest. So the part-day we spent in The Alice before our tour was quite enough. Unfortunately we'd already planned to spend a full day here afterwards too.
After our outback tour, we dragged our seriously aching limbs to Alice Springs Desert Park. This aims to show in one relatively small area all the different types of central Australian landscape.* It's reasonably successful, if a bit low-key - if you have a keen interest in the outdoors you'll have a field day (pun, as always, intended). They have some good reptile and bird houses, a less than successful nocturnal animals habitat (they use lighting to reverse daylight hours and get nocturnal creatures out during visiting hours, but it's too dark to see most of them), a good birds of prey show and a decent film show - with a nice touch at the end, where they segue from "Enjoy the natural landscape" by lowering the projection screen to show a big glass window with a great vista of the beautiful McDonnell Ranges which frame the park. Worth visiting if you're in town - not really worth being in town for though.
* Flying from AS to Sydney (for a connection to Brisbane) I got a window seat and the way the landscape changes quite abruptly is amazing. At times I felt like I was looking down on a different planet. Yes, mostly Mars. But there were also 'regular' (yellow sand) deserts and salt flats and forests. An enjoyable flight for that reason.
We finished up here with dinner and drinks in Bojangles - a fun bar full of Australiana which is also the base for the local radio station. They also like to have fun with the bathrooms - the toilet seats are clear plastic filled with barbed wire or razor blades, and the taps control random sinks rather than adjacent ones - ditto the controls of the hand dryers. Oh, those wacky locals. You can also head to their website to watch the bar on one of several cameras, and even buy your mate their a drink from the comfort of your own home. Sadly nobody seemed to be watching while we were there...
And now we're off! Hopefully Queensland will be at least slightly cooler with slightly fewer flies... Please don't disillusion me if you know otherwise.
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