Hi, kbob88,

The airport is no more than 15 minutes from town. Gives you plenty of time to get a taxi into Alice - visit the Alice Springs Desert Park or the Reptile Centre in town, get a taxi out to the Telegraph Station where Alice was "born". Depending on whether or not it is a week day, and not school holidays, it might be interesting for the children to have a quick look at the School of the Air, which covers over a million square kilometres!
At least this option would give you a taste of Alice which otherwise you would have missed.

It is a long drive to Uluru - we took the bus and that was a much more comfortable and less stressful way to travel for about six and a half hours. A car is not necessary at Ayers Rock (the area) if you take organised tours to Uluru and Kata Tjuta. Within the village there is a mini-bus service that does the circuit. When we were there it was free, and went about every 20 - 30 minutes. Mind you, I managed to walk across from where we stayed to the shopping centre with a damaged knee in 20 minutes!
We were there in 2010, and booked the following tours:

on the day we arrived:
- afternoon trip (about 2:00 pm) to Kata Tjuta and the Valley walk, which from memory was about an hour's walking. The trip was about two and a half hours. We returned to our accommodation for a short rest

- trip to Uluru for sunset
These trips were with AAT Kings, who we travelled from Alice Springs to Ayers Rock with.

Next day tours were booked with Anangu tours:
- sunrise at Uluru, followed by
- breakfast and Mala Bush walk (couldn't do because of damaged knee but my DH enjoyed this)
- later in the day we took the Kuniya Sunset Tour which started at the Cultural Centre. DH visited a cave with amazing paintings, if the photos are anything to go by, and the famous Mutitjulu waterhole (while I felt sorry for myself) and then we had yet another visit to see Uluru at sunset - a totally different experience as the sky was totally clear of clouds, unlike the first night.
We left the next day early afternoon. The only time I thought it would have been good to have a car was the second night when we could have watched the sunset over Kata Tjuta and the last morning to see the sun rise over Kata Tjuta. If we had been there for a third day then we would have hired a car.
Hope this helps rather than confuses! :)
Dot

Forgot the rest of the message!

You could hire a car and drive to Ayers Rock as there are places to stop on the way for a cuppa and leg-stretch. Not sure about the one-way hire cost though, or even if it is possible. It might be more than you could save by not flying although would give you more flexibility in a way. If this was possible then maybe you could take an extra night and visit Kings Canyon, which is about halfway between Alice and Ayers Rock. If you get up early in the morning you could walk the rim of the Canyon before it gets too hot, and then be in Ayers Rock in time to see the sunset at either Uluru or Kata Tjuta if you have the car.

Oops, this could be more confusing. Sorry.

dottyp -- thanks for the wealth of information! That will help us plan what to do at Uluru. As it turned out, our itinerary got reshuffled all around, so that we're now coming to Uluru from Cairns, and were able to get a nonstop right into AYQ. So no more need to stop at Alice.

Good news! We've booked all our flights! We managed to barely avoid bankrupting the family, although the folks at Amex are probably a bit surprised at the flurry of charges coming through, as pretty much all the domestic Oz flights were booked separately as one-ways.

So the itinerary is locked down at a high level:
- 5 1/2 days in Sydney
- 6 days in Melbourne
- 7 days in the Top End (Darwin, Kakadu, Litchfield, Katherine)
- 7 days in Cairns area (Pt Douglas or Palm Cove probably, Daintree, Atherton tablelands)
- 2 days in Uluru
- overnight in Sydney, and then fly home

Thanks for everyone's help! I'm sure I'll have a zillion detailed questions about lodging, sights, and activities now, but I'll probably post them in new threads.

kbob88, if you need help from me with the north Queensland section of your trip please post it soon as I am heading off on my own travels.