Welcome to Ausemade… coming to you from the ‘heart of Australia’.

Ausemade 2022… welcomes you into our website. As international flights return, for many, travelling is still fraught with cancellations, rescheduling and service availability. From fires, floods and shortage of workers, many Australian tourism operators are still struggling. So be kind and understanding, a smile can go a long way.

So now, we travel where we can and when we can. Many Australians are now exploring not only their own backyard, but further afield, within their own state and territories, and plans to travel interstate.

The heart of Australia is a very popular destination. If you miss the 2022 Alice Springs Beanie Festival, you can still check out some of our beanie photos. The celebrations of Territory Day, heralds more exciting events including the Henley-on-Todd, Red Centre Nats, Desert Mob and much more. If you are planning to visit for holiday or short-term work, it is wise to ensure you have your accommodation pre-booked and confirmed. Check-out our Alice Springs Accommodation list of providers.

For those who can’t explore, we share what we can through social media and our own websites, as we look into the future to a changed and changing world…

For those who are coming to the heart of Australia, check out some of our information, as we continue to grow our content.

As we are based in Alice Springs, our website main focus is on Central Australia, although we will continue to add content about the rest of Australia. We have been flat out for the past 12 months and are still working through some great content from our former site to include in our revamp website.

Check out our Alice Springs Festivals & Events page, with the current upcoming event being Alice Springs Beanie Festival.

Occasionally you will see pop-up things from our archive, with some expanded on the original article such as Bourke and the historic North Bourke Bridge.

Our flora and fauna section has been steadily growing so that the next time you are out and about in your travels, instead of what is that flower and what creature is that, or what bug is that, you may have already seen information on our site that provides you with the knowledge.

Our Blogs have entertained and provided us with a variety of stories, insights and topics, with many of our authors sharing a little of themselves with you our readers. Our recently published The Definition of Mental Anguish…, Hylaeus mysterium puella…, To bubble or not to bubble…, and Peek-a-boo… from our writer Gary Taylor provides an insight into the inner character and wonderful Australian humour of the author. There is also a blog about Felted Love, that shines a light on a passionate artisan Jane Gillard. Whilst DaQua is currently back home in Wales, you can still read her blogs Alice to Auburn – the Audacity of Adventure, and her Autumn Passion poem sent to us whilst in New Zealand, along with the Waitati Wandering.

Our very first blog Treasures of our Western Bowerbird (July 2020) and sequel Looking forward… (1 January 2021) took us through the making of a bower and the journey we travelled. Coming soon is the current state of our bower and the treasures within.

There is our blogger JeLa D with photos by Dorothy L., who gave us a great story with CBC… Fostering and the sequel A Home Like Alice. Included is our flashback to 2010 with the Night of a Thousand Croaks, whilst Toni from Alice Springs brought us Raining on the Rock.

For dog lovers, there is Camp Dogs and Beanies by Andrew Turner, who also reminiscence in The Camouflaged Pisser and reflects in his Part of the family… A light is shone on the iconic Bird Watching at the Beanie Festival, that takes us to The Art of Birds from our blogger Koh Lin, who also writes how he was smitten by the Faces of the Blue Moon, Its a jungle out there! and the moment he Felted Love…

We also like to welcome our latest contributor Marc Newman with his blogs that include Too much for Mrs Carpenter and Looking for Love… Also check out some of his amazing photos in our Fauna > Insects > Bees section.

We hope you enjoy our bloggers and their blogs, where we will be bringing our thoughts, our musings, our experiences… through articles and blog style quirky ramblings.

Central Australia remains a vibrant artistic centre, with amazing works from Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal artists. From our archives, we introduce “art in the park” or as in the case of Alice Springs “Art in the Botanic Garden“. Some of these works are still amazing even after all this time and look forward for the next event.

Take a stroll through our site, as we ‘showcase Australia’… See the places we have been, share our interest in flora and fauna, festivals and events that we have experienced, and learn about Australia from the coasts to ‘the living heart’. Keep coming back to our Snapshots (as we grow and evolve this section).

Flora and fauna is one of our favourite subjects at Ausemade… indeed what a poorer world we would live in if there was not the beautiful diversity. In Australia there is an amazing array of life from the smallest of insects to the huge whales that swim up and down our coastline. Our popular addition is the Golden-browed Resin Bee (Megachile aurifrons), the Caper White Butterfly (Belenois java teutonia), and the beautiful Waroona Cuckoo bee (Thyreus waroonensis). Take the ride with us as we continue to expand the ever popular section on Australian birds and native bees.

There is the rare Waddy-wood (Acacia peuce) that can be seen at both the Alice Springs Desert Park and the Olive Pink Botanic Garden, and if you can travel, you can see the waddy at the Mac Clarke Conservation Reserve. Even in our own backyards, we can be surprised and delighted by what grows and lives there.

For bird lovers, we are continually growing our content on birds with some wonderful photos from our contributors including Dorothy L. We are now starting to groups some of the bird species into their own collection such as Honeyeaters, Parrots, Raptors, Waders etc.

Recent additions will show some of the new and edited content added to Ausemade, with popular topic pages such as Birds listing that includes the Australian Hobby (Falco longipennis), Channel-billed Cuckoo, Painted Finch (Emblema pictum), White-browed Woodswallow (Artamus superciliosus), Variegated Fairywren (Malurus lamberti), Black-shouldered Kite (Elanus axillaris), Black Falcon (Falco subniger), and images of the soaring Whistling Kite (Haliastur sphenurus) and the beautiful markings of the juvenile Whistling Kite.

Also the popular Insects and Spiders will open up our eyes to the wonder of creatures small and smaller. The popular Bees, Wasps, Butterflies, Moths, Dragonflies and Spiders continues to grow with some fabulous images from our contributors.

Our new section on Grass and Grasses, will highlight some of the great and not so great grass species that grown all over Australia, such as Kangaroo Grass and Silkyheads. If you peer closely at some of the grass species, you may be surprised at what may be hiding or resting on the grass.

New content has been added to Alice Springs, including listing of accommodation, attractions and places to eat in Alice Springs. There are also topical stuff that reveals the not so arid heart as we talk about Water in Central Australia.

We look forward to up-coming events and look back at those that have been and gone including the Parrtjima Festival and Alice Springs Beanie Festival, as well as attractions that have remained open such as the Alice Springs Desert Park and of course the many scenic locations in Central Australia.

Throughout the site we source information, listing them in our Footnotes & References and on our publication page, we list books and other resources we enjoy here at Ausemade.

We are also now making it easier to share on Facebook and send links via your email, with the shortcut buttons on each page.