Pools of caramel-coloured water, swampy marshes and blankets of dewy grass.
This isn't the setting of a fantasy novel.
It's Alice Springs.
Former tropical cyclone Ellie crossed back into the Northern Territory from Western Australia last weekend, bringing heavy rainfall to the desert region.
Over the past week, parts of the central-west of the Northern Territory have received between 200 and 300 millimetres of rain, while Alice Springs Airport received 84mm in the 24 hours to 9am Monday.
The Todd River, which typically has zero to very low flow during most of the year, has turned into a milky rush of water and sediment.
Steve Eldridge, operations manager at the Australian Wildlife Conservancy with the Ngalurrtju Aboriginal Land Trust, said the rain had completely transformed the usually red and brown landscape.
"The place is just a sea of green," he said.
"We have had reasonable rains in the last couple of years. But before that, we had a really long, extended dry period where things were just dry and dusty — dirt everywhere, not much grass.
"It's just completely transformed the place, this last lot of rain that we've had."
He said the change had injected new life into the community.
"You persist for so long with hot, dry, dusty weather," he said.
"And when you get nice rains like this, that transform the environment, it's just invigorating."
Mr Eldridge said the rain also meant the local flora and fauna was flourishing.
"After all of this rainfall, we're going to get increases in seeds, in insects and in reptiles," he said.
"We are going to see big increases in bird populations.
"We're already starting to see budgies coming in, and some of the seed-eating birds like finches and doves."
There has also been an emergence of animals that many wouldn't expect to see in the desert.
"We've got some some really interesting frogs in this environment that spend most of their time during dry times underground, living inside this waterproof cocoon that holds water in for them to live in.
"And so they just spent years underground like that. And when you get rainfall like this that triggers them to come to the surface and breed in the temporary water pools."
He said conservationists would use this opportunity to try to bring other native species back from extinction.
"We've been able to reintroduce five or six of those species into a predator exclosure that we we have out at New Haven," he said.
"This rainfall period that we're getting now will be really beneficial to them and then in the longer term."
