The Barefoot Healer

Well, I'm in Alice again, looking out at one of the Sleeping Caterpillars of the McDonnell Ranges. Last night was open mike and art show night at Ningke Nungue in Tennant Creek...with a whole host of women showing and selling their paintings from neighboring communities, and a concert of yukeleles of all things, which are suffering from a strange revival in The middle of the Red Centre... Today a 5 hour drive, broken up by a delightful breakfast in the pub in Wauchope, which has the most delightful garden full of gnomes and rustic wooden tables hidden behind it's typical outback colourbond fence. Peta, one of the other RAHC nurses and I took it in turns driving along the pretty close to dead straight Stuart Highway, past the one and only Mango and Vege farm back to Alice Springs. It was quieter here this afternoon than on my way up....its cold and windy, so there wee only a few locals out sitting on the grass of the Todd Mall, and much less of an underlying feeling of agro and...

My last weekend in Tennant.... Yesterday we went for a drive to the lookout next to the watertank...wow, you forget how vast this land is when you hang around town all the time... One photo shows a dirt track stretching off into the distance...the next city from here is Alice Springs...which is 5 hours drive away, grin! The other photo is of a lone cloud on the horizon seen from up there...took me a while to realize it was smoke from a bushfire...no wind, not even a breeze, which is why it was it was just collecting there in one huge smoke cloud low on the horizon. Today, after a long lazy breakfast checking my emails, i wandered down the main street to see if any shops were open...past the serpent winding along the wall of the emporium sports store, where the local kids all buy their baggy shirts and shorts...and found a little Aboriginal art gallery called "Desert Rose 21". It's run by a delightful woman called Jenny, who works in the local schools during the week, and...