The Big Read: Out and about

Simon Hughes ventures beyond Australia's coastal cities to its vast, unforgiving Red Centre

'Australia is just a vast, useless desert full of spiders." I wrote that in a book after a few trips to Australia, convinced that, apart from its beautiful coastline, it was true. Surprisingly, most Australians seemed reluctantly to agree. Although most of them, like me, had never actually visited their country's inhospitable interior.

Now I have. What did I discover? Well, beyond the coast, Australia is basically a vast, useless desert (though I didn't find any spiders). Yet it is beautiful, fascinating and totally worth the effort of getting there. I have visited the cities, beaches and the coral reefs. I have seen all the famous sights. I have ridden an emu. Stunning as they all are, a week in the Red Centre was definitely the most intriguing experience I have had in Australia.

Alice Springs is the centre of the centre, so to speak. It takes roughly two hours to fly from one of the coastal cities to Alice, or a day and a half to drive it (driving at night in the Outback is not recommended, as distant oncoming headlights are disorientating not just to drivers but also to kangaroos, which can leap unexpectedly at cars and do calamitous damage). Whichever way you travel, you become acutely aware of Australia's emptiness. Alice, 1300km from the nearest city (Adelaide), is literally a place in the middle of nowhere. It is, says Bill Bryson, "tantalising in its inaccessibility". It was before air travel, anyway.

Alice is not exactly teeming with life either. In fact, it has a dozy sort of feel. You can cross most of the town's roads without looking, and when you climb Anzac Hill to stare down at its simple grid layout, you can't see much movement. There's one set of traffic lights, across the main Stuart Highway that bisects the town on its 3000km route from Darwin to Adelaide.

Look closer though and there's quite a bit to see. A short drive from my hotel, past a decent-looking golf course, is the Earth Sanctuary. As you drive in, it looks like you're entering the desert set of a spaghetti western. An old caravan lies in metre-high weeds, a wooden wind turbine stands silent and disconnected, there are deserted metal sheds to one side and you park in front of a dilapidated homestead. You half expect Lee van Cleef to emerge from inside.

But this dishevelled façade conceals a hotbed of scientific experimentation. Tom Falzon, who owns and runs the Earth Sanctuary with his family, has created a fully sustainable environment that has zero impact on our planet, using solar panels and wind turbines for power, a simple system of water catchment, vegetable and herb cultivation and accommodation in "Life Pods" - futuristic-looking domes on elevated decks, which are easier to build than conventional homes, more efficient and adaptable.

The Earth Sanctuary runs award-winning workshops on how to make your living more sustainable, and stargazing events where you sleep in the open air in "swags" (heavy-duty sleeping bags) and get a guided tour of the night sky. Venus glows so big and bright you feel as if you can almost reach out and touch it.

The longer you linger in Alice, where the temperature regularly tops 40°C and it sometimes doesn't rain for two years, the more you wonder if it has been established primarily to test the limits of existence. "The desert doesn't say sorry," is a phrase you will often hear in these parts. Everywhere there are amazing stories and demonstrations of survival or endurance.

The Alice Springs Desert Park is a sort of arid version of Kew Gardens. Various desert habitats have been created here, which you can stroll through, astonished at the range of trees and plants (and birds) that are flourishing. In the reptile house, the thorny devil - a lizard that looks like a knobbly rock - lies motionless in wait for one of the 3000 varieties of ant that live around here. Brilliantly adapted to life in these sweltering climes, it lives mainly off ants and is able to neutralise the chemical excreted by the insects when they are killed (a warning to other ants), meaning its prey literally wanders into its mouth. It is not called a "devil" for nothing.

For humans living amid these vast swathes of nothingness, there are other problems. Some communities in the Northern Territory live on remote cattle stations of several million acres, roughly the size of Belgium. The nearest settlement is 160km away. Children can't get to the local school. The School of the Air, based in Alice, provides their education with lessons delivered from a studio via the web. This is the world's largest "classroom", with a sphere of influence covering 1.3 million square kilometres of the Outback, the area of Britain, France and Spain combined.

It was time to go into the Outback proper. Australians talk about the "Bush" and the "Outback" and it is hard to tell where one finishes and the other starts, but once you have driven 10 minutes west of Alice Springs, you soon feel beyond civilisation. The road traverses mile upon mile of bush, scrub and rocky outcrop, with the West MacDonnell Ranges running parallel, but everything is dwarfed by the interminable view ahead and the vast sky above. The land is a permanent ochre.

The desert landscape is unrelenting but it is not a boring drive. The road weaves and undulates and there is a surprising amount of vegetation: grassy knolls line the route and there are acacia and eucalyptus trees dotted about. You frequently round a corner to find an unusual rock formation or two giant boulders perched precariously against each other, belying the fact that they have probably remained like that for 100 million years.

After about an hour, there is a turn-off to Standley Chasm. This is worth the detour if only to stretch your legs for 15 minutes to follow a path through eucalyptus to the chasm itself, a narrow cleft between two giant pieces of red sandstone that glow almost purple in the midday sun. There is a shady coffee bar by the car park.

The road forks right towards Ellery Creek Big Hole and the land turns a deeper shade of orange. And here you find the most surprising thing of all in the desert: water - gallons of it lying in a small lake beneath craggy sandstone cliffs. The ancient Finke River system has created perhaps the world's most remote beach, 1600km from the sea in any direction. There is only one thing to do in this 38°C heat: strip off and swim. The water, in late November, was warm and refreshing. And, even more exceptional for Australia, it contained nothing that could bite or sting. A revelation.

We drove on another half an hour to Glen Helen "Resort". Actually, it's more of a pub-restaurant, but the food is excellent. I had the local delicacy - kangaroo salad - which, although a weird and perhaps unappetising concept, was superb, the tender meat lightly dressed with balsamic vinegar on a bed of rocket and iceberg lettuce. The view from the "resort's" terrace - overlooking dramatic cliffs with the Finke River below - is fabulous.

Glen Helen is the end of the road. There is nothing beyond it. It is a good point to stock up with drinking water (you will need lots) as there's nowhere to buy it (or fuel) on the two-hour drive back to Alice.

The intense colours of the Outback - the oranges and greens and blues - fade only marginally in the afternoon as you whizz back to "civilisation", marvelling at the early pioneers who traversed this inhospitable region on foot (some even carrying a boat in the hope of finding water).

It was a relaxing drive - four hours in the car felt less tiring than one circuit of Hammersmith Broadway. And it has been illuminating. I feel that, after almost 30 years of visits to the Great Outdoors, I have finally experienced the real Australia and at last understand why so many of its people have an indomitable spirit and an unquenchable thirst and are noisily proud of their remarkable country.

GETTING THERE: Qantas flies direct from Johannesburg to Sydney and SAA has direct flights between Johannesburg and Perth. Skyscanner.net was quoting return fares starting at R11271 for travel in August, while SAA was offering return fares at R11361 over the same period.

WHERE TO STAY:

DoubleTree by Hilton (doubletree3.hilton.com; doubles from R1300). Conveniently just off the Stuart Highway, the hotel is a 15-minute drive from Alice Springs airport and within walking distance of downtown, affording eco-friendly luxury and stunning views of the majestic MacDonnell Ranges.

Lasseters Hotel (lasseters.com.au; doubles from R1400). Lasseters Hotel Casino boasts 205 superior four-and-a-half-star rooms and suites nestled beneath the famous MacDonnell Ranges. All rooms have private balconies with views of the nearby 18-hole Alice Springs Golf Course, the Todd River, the swimming pool or the MacDonnell Ranges. - © The Sunday Telegraph

 © The Sunday Telegraph