Chapter 16-17 Summary and Analysis

Bill Bryson and Allan Sherwin continue on the road to Alice Spring, surrounded by a bleak desert, Martian in its harsh red features. They stop briefly at a site known as the Devils Marbles, where a vast field of massive boulders, some thirty or more feet across, were perched seemingly miraculously on bases the widths of manhole covers.

They arrive in Alice Springs, a town of 25,000, but with an average of 350,000 tourists a year. Bryson comments on how bizarre it is, in the middle of such bleakness, to suddenly find a town with name brand shopping centers and international hotels. Disappointed with their hotel view of the K-mart parking lot, they decide the next day to drive the 300 kilometers to see Ayers Rock, or to give it its proper Aborigine name, Uluru, a massive sandstone rock formation, sacred to...