September 1 Tuesday Did further explorations of Adelaide on foot, visiting the main Art Gallery and the main Museum in the city as well as the cricket stadium, some of the northern suburbs, and half of the botanical gardens. This was my favorite botanical garden in Australia, mainly because this is the first that really had flowers in bloom. Almost every town has at least one, often many gardens (ie parks in American English), but up until now the plants have been largely dormant and spring has sprung here, so it is beautiful. I also found the requisite graffiti in back alleys for my photo collection. I checked again in the nearby hostels to see if anyone is traveling to Alice Springs, but did not find anything. With the plan in mind to give that search a couple more days, I booked two additional nights at the YHA. A small group from the hostel went out for pizza in the evening, including two of my new roommates from Germany.

September 2 Wednesday After breakfast, I walked to a travel agency several blocks away where I had seen an ad for train tickets to Alice Springs for $160. On my way I stopped in a hostel I had not checked yesterday and there was a posting from a girl looking for someone to drive with her to Darwin. I called her immediately and we talked briefly and set up a time to meet in the afternoon to talk about it and see if we could work together. So I was feeling a lot better and went to the travel agency. They told me that Greyhound had cancelled all their buses to Alice Springs as of Sept 1, which would have been a bit of shocking news if I had booked a ticket already (and I almost had on several occasions). The train fare I had seen would not work for me because of the dates I needed to arrive in Alice, but she offered me two options $210 with another bus company that included a stay underground at Coober Pedy or a plane for $119. The plane fare was the cheapest/fastest option I had seen yet, but since I am already flying back from Alice Springs, I really wanted to see the route from ground level in at least one direction. I told her I would likely be back in the afternoon. I went back to the YHA and read for a bit then headed to Chinatown to meet Eva near Coles. A few minutes after our appointed time she came. She had waited at the other entrance of the store for a bit before deciding to check where I was. I almost had done the same, but nonetheless we connected. We picked a little coffee shop and she had coffee while I ate a muffin. She has been WWOOFing in several cities for about 6 months and wants to apply to stay for another year. But she was taking some time out to travel the country and I was the first passenger she would be taking. She is also a Couchsurfer, so we had that in common. We decided that we both felt comfortable with each other and would plan to leave Friday morning. She had a contact in Alice Springs (friends of people she was working for earlier) that was expecting her by the end of the weekend, which worked for both of us time wise. I told her I was planning to borrow a bike and ride to the beach in the morning and she said she wanted to do that as well, so we arranged to meet about 9 and bring anyone else who was interested. After we parted, I immediately got in touch with Jon and told him I had a ride so he was free to take off when ever he got his situation squared away.

September 3 Thursday I had a great day. I picked up a free bike rental a block from my hostel and Eva came over with a bike from her hostel. Just like our first meeting we each waited on opposite sides of our planned meeting building before finding each other. No one else had wanted to make the ride with us. The two of us headed west out of the city along the river to the ocean. The path along the river is wonderful. One of the best things about Adelaide is its park space – there is so much of it, by design. When the city planners developed the layout they put a ring of parkland around the city center so that if ever attacked they could use that as a defensible space. Of course that has not happened and the resulting parkspace is something special. We walked along the beach for a stretch and Eva found a large lizard (reminded me of a gila monster, but not poisonous) which I got pictures of and picked up. She said they were common around the farm area where she was working before. By the time we returned to the city we had done about 40kms in wonderfully mild weather. Eva is a very level headed young woman and it was fun to talk with her. I think the next couple days will be fun traveling together.

September 4 Friday Eva came and picked me up at 9 am just across the street from the bus terminal and we began our journey to the Red Center. We did not have many places to stop or reasons to. Once we got past Port Augusta there were only roadhouses every 100-150 kilometers and that was pretty much it. We did spend nearly two hours walking around Port Augusta, more time than either of us realized. It was a pleasant city to walk in and it got us out of the car for some lunch and needed leg stretching. Then we pushed on and made it to Coober Pedy right around 8pm. Coober Pedy is the aboriginal name meaning White Man's Hole in the Ground. The claim to fame for this region is that (depending on which source you believe) 50 to 80% of the opal supply for the world comes from right here. The surroundings are festooned with the mounds of tailings and it does have a distinctly other worldly look, which is why the area was used for much of the filming of the Mad Max movies that made Mel Gibson a known name. Our hostel was indeed underground and Eva and I were half of the total staying for the night. We took quite a few pictures of the subterranean facilities. The older man who was running the place was an amusing Australian and very helpful. We had put in about 850 kms for the day so we went to bed pretty soon after getting there (that put us just over half way to Alice Springs). We had been on the lookout all day for Red Kangaroos, the largest of the kangaroo family, but the only living things we saw were a few emus. There where the normal roadkill to evidence that creatures do live in this inhospitable environment somehow.

September 5 Sabbath We got up at 6:30 knowing we had a long day ahead and probably a hot one as well. There is very little between Coober Pedy and Alice Springs, other than roadhouses, so it was a steady slog through the bright sun for another 700 kilometers. Eva is quite pleasant company and we talked about many different things. Once we arrived in Alice Springs, we went straight to the information center (which was closed early on the weekend), so Eva called the lady she was supposed to stay with and got directions to her house and also asked if I could stay there for two nights. That was no problem and really helps me out. Fantastic. The family are friends of another family that Eva was doing some WWOOFing work for. They have a nice house and we helped make dinner together before going to bed early.