In July 2003 I moved from Canberra to join my husband John who had been appointed as Botany Curator at the Alice Springs Desert Park (ASDP) that April. John had worked at the Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG) for about 13 years, and had been the staff representative at the ANBG Friends' Council in recent years, and I had worked at the Australian National Herbarium (ANH) or ANBG for 10 years. (In fact we met at ANBG in 1994.) This account is based on my talk to the Friends in May 2006, and describes some of the aspects of our life in Central Australia (CA), in particular the more familiar plants and animals that we encountered daily, and some rare plants from one of our excursions. The ASDP is run by the Northern Territory government and was opened in 1997. It is an integrated and well interpreted botanic gardens and zoo for CA native plants and animals. It lies 6 km west of Alice Springs, and consists of a developed area of about 30 ha (the 'core precinct'), with a 2.5 m electrified fence to exclude feral animals, and 1300 hectares of natural and semi-natural vegetation around it, extending over the quartzite-topped Heavitree Range to the south. The Desert Park area was previously the town common, so is a bit degraded except in the restored core precinct, but still has enough native vegetation, birds and reptiles in the outer part of the Park to make life interesting. We were lucky enough to live in one of only three houses there. The NT herbarium, with its 30,000 dried plant specimens, was just across the road, providing friendly contacts and useful resources. Three desert habitats have been created in the core precinct of the Park: The woodland habitat, which is an enrichment of the natural ecosystem at the base of the ranges. The sand dune habitat which was created by bringing in thousands of tonnes of red sand,   and The desert rivers habitat, where many river red gums were planted and irrigated for a few years until they were established. In northern Australia these are Eucalyptus camadulensis var. obtusa, with unbeaked caps on the buds and more colourful bark than var. camaldulensis which occurs across southern Australia. The ASDP core precinct has a wide range of plants from across Central Australia, plus 8 or 9 beautiful aviaries, many excellent live animal exhibits in its nocturnal house, and an open air theatre where a show using trained raptors is staged twice daily. Various species of Acacia dominated the vegetation in the outer undeveloped park, including two varieties of Mulga (A. aneura), the lovely Ironwood tree (A. estrophiolata) with its weeping foliage, the fire-resistant rapid resprouters Colony Wattle (A. murrayanum) and Prickly Wattle (A. victoriae), and the Witchetty Bush (A. kempeana), which is very drought resistant but fire sensitive, and is killed even by cool winter burns. A large Witchetty Bush in our backyard provided a perch and refuge for birds using the bird bath. Native birds, including many honeyeater species, formed an almost continuous stream of visitors in the mornings and evenings of the hot days, of which there were many. There were some colourful skinks around in the summer time, and plenty of geckoes at night, but the most abundant lizards during the day were the long-nosed dragons, which grew to about 40 cm including their very long tails. On hot days they'd sit around on rocks, sometimes waving a front claw, and when disturbed would run away on their heels. They fascinated and frustrated our cat Muffy, who was permanently confined indoors as a condition of her tenure at the Park. At night, the euros sometimes came out onto the plains to graze. Desert Ghost Gums, Acacia and Buffel Grass, with Heavitree Range (Mt Gillen) in background In the outer park area around the houses, the Desert Ghost Gum (Corymbia aparrerinja) occurs along or near the drainage lines. The Desert Bloodwood (Corymbia terminalis), is regenerating well on some parts of the park and mature individuals have beautifully tessellated bark. Closer to the range, the Whitewood (Atalaya hemiglauca) provides some bright green foliage and flowered well in Oct-Nov. 2004 when most other plants had finished. The native orange (Capparis mitchellii) is seen occasionally as isolated individuals. This species is actually in the caper family Capparaceae but has dense dark green foliage like an orange tree, and spectacular large creamy yellow flowers in late spring. Both species are fairly widepsread across Australia from northern NSW to the Pilbara in WA. Three small trees from the Proteaceae are common around the park: Grevillea striata or Beefwood, Hakea lorea, and Hakea divaricata, the Fork-Leaved Corkwood. These are impressive in flower and some individuals have interesting gnarled form. Mistletoes are diverse, abundant and conspicuous. Amyema maidenii has great development on the Ironwoods (Acacia estrophiolata) and Beefwoods (Grevillea striata), sometimes increasing the weight of their limbs to breaking point. Mistletoes provide a shady summer refuge for birds, and food when nothing else is flowering. The most common low shrub in the outer desert park is the Ruby Saltbush (Enchylaena tomentosa) which is widely distributed across Australia and conspicuous in many mallee areas in south-eastern Australia. It is able to survive on scalded areas where most of the topsoil has been blown away. There were at least three subspecies of the taller shrub (Senna artemisoides), also very widely distributed and common, around the park. The Sennas produced a profusion of bright yellow pea flowers in late winter regardless of whether rain had fallen or not. The 1981 Flora of Central Australia gives figures of 57 species of Eremophila (Emu Bushes) occurring in CA out of 180 in Australia, and we saw quite a few species while we were there. Eremophila latrobei, with red flowers, occurs in flatter areas of the outer park and the Rock Fuchsia (Eremophila freelingii), can be found at the foot of the ranges, looking rather rough until rain stimulates growth of green foliage and lovely mauve flowers in spring. It often occurs with spinifex, more correctly called Triodia (various species), hummock grasses which grow over large areas of arid Australia, usually in a fairly uniform vegetation pattern of round plants fairly evenly spaced, forming myriad dots on the landscape. In the Desert Park, Triodia occurred mostly on the range, where I managed to fall into a hummock during one climb, causing amusement to John and prolonged discomfort to myself. At a certain altitude on parts of the range, there is a predominance of a distinctive grayish shrub (Indigofera leucotricha), which has lovely red pea flowers a month or two after good winter rain. There are about 13 species of Indigofera in Central Australia. The understorey in most areas is dominated by the introduced buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris). Buffel grass was first introduced to CA in the 1870's by the Afghan cameleers. In the 1960's, it was deliberately and widely sown following severe dust storms, to stabilise the soil and as a pasture grass. It fulfils both roles admirably, and responds to as little as 5 mm of rain with new green growth. Unfortunately, it excludes the native grasses to a considerable extent. Removal of the buffel from the Desert Park core precinct gave rise to an attractive layer of short tufted perennial grasses which was lacking in areas of dense buffel. In pastoral areas, buffel is mostly grazed down, but in nature reserves it can provide up to 100% cover in the more fertile and better watered areas, and may grow to around half a metre high. It loves growing around the base of trees, and it even climbs up into them. Buffel fires often kill fire-sensitive trees and shrubs as they burn more intensely than would be the case under more natural conditions, native grasses being more delicate in stature and unable to carry a fire so well. Driving west from Alice Springs is a popular day trip, with Simpson's Gap, Standley Chasm, Ellery Creek Big Hole, the Ochre Pits, Ormiston Gorge and Glen Helen all easily accessible by 2-wheel-drive car trips and short walks. Ranges to the north and south of the road are often topped with cliffs of red quartzite. We paid several visits to Ellery Creek Big Hole, 80 km west of Alice Springs, which is a popular swimming spot with some very deep cold water under the cliffs. The Heavitree quartzite rock around the waterhole is 850 to 800 myo. On the drive out to the main road (a km or two), you can see about 250 million years of varied geological history due to the tilting of all the rocks, and there are corresponding variations in plant communities. At Standley Chasm and Ellery Creek, we saw Macrozamia macdonelliensis, CA's only cycad, with young Callitris glaucophylla or white cypress, a species very common in some of the arid and semi-arid areas of temperate Australia such as the eastern Riverina, but occurring as mature trees only in fire-free refuges in CA. There is also a Native Fig (Ficus playpoda), growing in rocky gorges and low on rocky slopes where water collects. The summer rains of 2003-4 were mainly associated with thunder storms and often built up over several humid days. They caused germination and flowering of annual grasses like button grass Dactyloctenium radulans. The perennial grasses greened up and flowered remarkably quickly, especially the buffel grass, but also the native nine-awn grasses, Enneapogon polyphyllus and E. avenaceous. These retain their distinctive silvery glumes after the fluffy seed has gone, and are common in the absence of buffel. While the summer rains had stimulated grass growth, the 80 mm of rain which fell over two weeks in late May - early June 2004 brought up dicot ephemerals, species that grow, flower and fruit over a few months after good rain. These included several small herbaceous members of the Brassicaceae (cabbage) family, and many different types of daisies from the family Asteraceae. By late July, some of the ephemerals were blooming, most obviously Stenopetalum nutans (family Brassicaceae) which gave the landscape a yellowish tinge due to its great numbers, fine stature and filamentous long yellow petals, and there was a beautiful nectary scent pervading the landscape in the early evenings. Later on, the yellow and white paper daisy Rhodanthe floribunda was more conspicuous for months even when it had dried off. Small but in great numbers, it still looked attractive in late November along the Simpson's Gap Bike Path, which runs for 17 km from the Desert Park to Simpson's Gap and provides gentle exercise and great scenery away from the noise of the roads. On 15 August 2004, John and I camped at Red Bank Gorge, a very pleasant camping area about 130 km W of Alice Springs, and climbed Mt Sonder, the Northern Territory's third highest mountain, which rises 800 m above the plain to reach 1380 m ASL. It is likely that we were witnessing a fairly rare event in terms of species composition and flowering of the plant communities, brought on by fire followed by reasonable seasons. Most of the mountain-side we walked up had been burnt during the summer of 2002-3. There was a prolific germination and flowering of Fabaceaeous sub-shrubs, such as species of Indigofera and Swainsona, scrambling across the hard rocky ground, and Butterfly Bush (Petalostylis cassioides) also featured. Central Australia's ?only Hibbertia, occurring also in the Pilbaras but not known between, H. glaberrima appeared quite frequently as well grown shrubs with luxuriant flowers, and Hakea grammatophylla, confined to CA, was conspicuous with its pinkish-red flowers. Wrixonia schultzii and Triodia near the summit of Mt Sonder, Central Australia. There was a beautiful rocky shrubby area near the summit of the mountain which had been missed by the fires. A few individuals of Leucopogon sonderensis were present, almost tucked under the rocky ledges. CA's only epacrid, this species is very limited in distribution although not confined to Mt Sonder. A very distinctive, large, dark-coloured, small-leaved shrub also growing in the summit area is Wrixonia schultzii from the mint family Lamiaceae, a species which is known only from this very small area. There is only one other species in this genus and that occurs in WA. Wrixonia was formerly part of the genus Prostanthera. We must have been too many years residing in Canberra's cool climate, for we lasted less than two years in the heat of the Centre, where only mid April to August was really pleasant for outdoor day-time activity and the sea was a long way away. John decided to leave Public Sector employment and is managing 'The Garden' at Weston for the moment, where some of his work is actually with plants again, and I am back at ANH as Herbarium Registrar, facilitating and undertaking specimen label data capture, so that everyone can more easily examine and study the distributions of these and other Australian plants. See www.anbg.gov.au/avh which was used in the preparation of this article. *   *   *   *   *