Alice Springs (The Alice)

"What's so great about "The Alice"? Well we reckon it's the 5 C's; the Climate, the Colours, the Culture, the Characters and the Closest proximity to every beach in Australia. So don't forget to check out the Tide Times around the country."
-From the Alice Springs town website. You've got to love the Australian sense of humour.

Flying across Australia and into Alice Springs was fantastic. I imagine it doesn't give the same sense of distance and hardship as traversing it by foot or with camels, but the view from the air was worth giving all that up for ;). All the travel brochures show a rust red landscape that I thought for sure had to have been enhanced, but there it was in all its glorioius redness floating by with unexpected ridges, sand dunes and vast salt lakes that, even knowing it's impossible, you really think have to be water. We were really excited to be entering the outback, known in the 19th century as Australia's "ghastly blank" or the poetic "never never".

I don't usually mention airports, but this one was the cutest little thing...it even had a park. What really struck us right away wasn't the heat (not so bad), or the flatness (Alice Springs is surrounded by ranges), but the incredible dryness! The air is so moisture free it actually feels somehow lighter. After Melbourne and our last day of drizzle this seemed refreshing, but I was soon to see the error of such thinking.

We rented a car for this part of the trip since we were planning to drive to Ayers Rock/Uluru which is about 400 miles away. I found out later that it actually has its own airport, but honestly where is the adventure in that? Plus, I wanted to see Alice Springs. Dylan was the brave one to take on the left hand driving first since he'd done it already in Ireland, and he did a great job of getting us into town. Actually this wasn't that much of a challenge since town consists of about about 20 roads and there is only one road leading away from the airport that you can traverse without a 4x4. However, there were all these mini rotaries which were simply ridiculous. Between these and the teeny parking lots you find yourself very much aware that this was a town settled by English folk who were completely overwhelmed by all the open space around them and therefore had no idea what to do with it. There's a good side to this too though. Very rarely in all the places we went in Australia did I ever see an American style suburban starter castle. This does not mean that they don't have ugly houses, it's just that the Australians don't seem to have the goofy American need to build hideous, ostentatious houses; nor do they drive humongous SUV's despite the fact that this is certainly an area of the world where you might really need a Hummer to take your kids to Soccer.

Of course maybe they don't have SUVs because, in the outback at least, the distance between gas stations can be a bit scary. There were only 3 places to get gas between Alice Springs and Ayers Rock Resort. And that's the main highway. On an unpaved road leading off to who knows where from the Olgas there was a giant red sign warning "no petrol for the next 800km" (or 500 miles....that's more than most gas tanks would hold I'd wager). I wish I'd taken a picture of this sign because the warnings continued in such a fashion that you started to wonder just who would go down such a track.

At any rate, for the first day at least, we were only headed as far as the Alice Springs Desert Park which was very cool. It's all off on its own in the shadow of one of the MacDonnell ranges and contains natural environments where you can see much of the elusive desert wildlife. There were kangaroos and emus you could walk amongst, birds of prey sent swooping after dinner, snakes and lizards - but the best of all was the nocturnal house.


Now, I don't know if anyone else outside of my family has ever read "Sam, Bangs and Moonshine", but if you have then you know why I was so intent on seeing some Spinifex Hopping Mice, or Kangaroo mice as I'd always called them. (Turns out kangaroo mice are actually from the southwestern US...go figure...but they look pretty much the same as the Spinifex mice). Well, anyway, I fell in love with the little things. There were all different varieties and they were all hopping around like mad. There was also a bilby, known as the Australian Easter Bunny because Australia has no love for rabbits which cause all sorts of environmental havoc (never mind the feral cats or the cane toads!), and a mala, which plays an important role in many of the local aboriginal (Arrente) dreamtime legends.

We also sat in on a talk by a local Arrente man who explained the ways in which the aborigines of the area interpreted the landscape through "songlines". I had read a bit about this concept before embarking on our trip, but truthfully it is a very foreign concept to grasp. (As are other concepts such as their "guardianship of the land" and the way in which knowledge is shared only with certain people and only in part). Somehow a map of the landscape is created through a song which tells the story from the dreamtime, or creation time. Even more impressively, this songs and their meanings can be communicated to other tribes, even if there is a language barrier, by the rhythms and melodies. As our guide told the story of how the MacDonnell ranges were created (many of these stories seemed to involve woman being chased or seduced by men and/or creatures) he drew in the sand with a stick. At the end he had created a beautiful series of swirls, dots and dashes which told the story and was a map. This is what many of the aboriginal artworks represent. Unfortunately, others in our group were stepping on the "art" before I could get a picture.

We also learned about all sorts of "bush tucker" and traditional ways of living off the land. I remember learning from my mom about what the native americans (the Wampanoags) in our area hunted and grew for food, and being suitable impressed. But they had nothing on these people. I mean, this is a place where all the "rivers" marked on the map are dry for most of the year and where the wildlife consists of only small marsupials, lizards and the an amazing variety of ants. The most impressive ant was the honey ant which secrets some kind of honey substance out its wazoo and is apparently very sweet. It was honey ant season, so we scoured the landscape for this natural dessert, but came up empty handed. This was also the first place (far, far away from the rock itself) that we were first asked face to face not to climb Uluru.

We headed into town for dinner and were impressed by the number of aboriginal people we saw. Nowhere else outside of the Alice and around Uluru were any to be seen. There may have been a few in Cairns as well, but not many. I would have noticed too because it's not like there are many black people at all in Australia. There are many asian people though, which considering the "white australia policy" was in effect until the 1970's is pretty impressive. (I wish there were more Italian people because their pizza is terrible.) The presence of an indigenous culture is strong in Australia though, if not always the members of that culture themselves. I don't know if this is just a tourist marketing tool, or a result of efforts being made in the land reparations area to come to terms with the past. Maybe it is both, but either way aboriginal issues seem more in the spotlight than native american issues ever do here. Hopefully that means there is more being done to assist those who need it. Unfortunately, many of the aboriginal people in downtown Alice Springs did not seem to be doing very well. Many were wearing lots of clothing as if they were homeless (a strange concept for a people whose home was once the very land that surrounds them) and some were obviously drunk. Of course the main strip of any town attracts the crazies so I'm not sure what conclusions can be drawn from this.

It's hard to form any real opinions based on such a short visit, but there was certainly a culture clash of some sort happening. This isn't terribly surprising considering it was only 143 years ago that the explorer John McDouall Stuart made his way through the territory. And Alice Springs was settled only just about 100 years ago. So the Arrente people have gone through quite a transition in only a few generations. From what I gather, many still live in the traditional way, while others combine the two lifestyles, and I'm sure many others adapt in their own personal ways. In this region, unlike the coasts, it still seems possible for the old ways to be preserved. But the conflicts and misunderstandings must be deep, and I couldn't help but feel a gulf between myself as a "white" tourist and the aborigines I saw in town. There was a wariness in the atmosphere that expressed itself once when I asked an aboriginal family in a public parking lot if it was okay for nonresidents to park there. The man didn't even look at me and just got into his car. The woman, holding a small girl, hesitated but did let me know it was all right. Ahhhh women....we hold things together :) At any rate, it was fascinating. I really wished I could have stayed longer and had a better chance at getting to know some people in order to get some real opinions on how it felt to be at the center of such a merging of different histories.

The next morning had us up bright and early and on our way to Uluru. We were told when we rented our car that we were not allowed to drive at night outside of the city limits. Also we would not be insured if we hit a kangaroo. What do these two things have in common? We weren't more than 20 miles down the "highway" before the answer to that became abundantly clear. The roadside was littered with dead kangaroos. Big red kangaroos, little wallabies, a few cattle thrown in for variety, kangaroos being eaten by humongous red tailed hawks, freshly dead kangaroos and desicated remains that in that dry environment could have been there for years. It was enough to make every little bush look like it could be jumping out at you. And you can't swerve. There is no road shoulder and no speed limit. A black circle with a line through it marks the point at which all bets are off. If your tire goes off the "bitumen" at 80mph you stand a good chance of joining the kangaroos. And then there are "road trains", tractor trailers that are hitched together to form barrelling caravans (honestly the ones we saw of these didn't quite meet the hype, but maybe we were lucky).
Luckily, the kangaroos mostly come out at twilight and at night so we were spared any close brushes with live ones. Unfortunately that also meant we never saw any packs of kangaroos roaming the plains.

But we did see some camels, and crazy big dry river beds, and kilometer upon kilometer of dusty, red plain. I thought it was the coolest scenery I'd seen in some time. Of course I'm a desert fan to begin with and one of my favorite trip memories is driving through Death Valley at night, but even if I wasn't I still think I'd have found it pretty awesome. But then again many of the guidebooks I read referred to this as a "long, boring drive" so I guess it doesn't work for everybody. It was amazing to me how many little trees and shrubs grew out there and how red dirt and rocks could compose themselves in so many varied ways. I'll admit that by the time we drove back it was getting a bit monotonous though. The road is perfectly straight and there are so few other cars and nothing else to look at...nothing humanmade of any kind other than the 3 roadhouses on the way.

I finally tried my hand at driving halfway there and took to it rather well (not that I had much to do other than keep the car in a straight line more or less on the left hand side of the road and keep an eye out for cattle). We could see Mt. Connor in the distance which is a large outcrop that many people mistake for Uluru, but which isn't as famous because it's not so oddly shaped and probably also because it does not have a road going to it. We stopped for lunch (some strange meat...was it roo?) and gas at a roadhouse where they had a guniea pig in a huge cage. Another example of the intricate australian sense of humour.


We finally got to Uluru in the late afternoon and contented ourselves with a drive around and a visit to the cultural centre. The centre was a a great way of putting Uluru in the context of aboriginal history and also another place where one was constantly entreated not to climb it. On the way back to the resort (we were in the campground cabins) we stopped to sit awhile entranced by the shifting colors of Uluru as the sunset. It really is a marvelous pebble in the desert. I can understand completely why the indigenous peoples found this place to be sacred. It is a long way to go to see a big rock, but it was without a doubt one of the highlights of the trip. Hey, some people told me Stonehenge was just a bunch of rocks too, but if you have any sense of wonder or imagination at all these sorts of places transport you, just a touch, from the everyday.

We spent the evening shivering (it can get cold at night in the desert...and we didn't discover the heater until morning) and making trips outside to check out the stars of the southern hemisphere, wild rabbits busily destroying habitats, and more pedestrian things like going to the bathrooms.

The next day we took a tour that provided aboriginal interpretation of a bit of Uluru. It was offered for free by the cultural centre as a way of encouraging people not climb it and to instead learn about the history of the site. It was very interesting and the guide was cool (hearing him speak the local language was really cool). He's been collecting photos of cave paintings on Uluru and creating an online database of them - talk about mixing the cultures! He was kind enough to explain to me exactly why the Anangu* still allow people to climb Uluru if it is so offensive to them. *(The people living near Uluru are comprised of 3 "tribes", Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjara. However they all refer to themselves as Anangu, which originally just meant people in general, but has now come to imply an Aboriginal person or, more specifically, a member of one of these three tribes.) I knew the land had been returned to the Anangu in 1985 and leased back to the government for 100 years. What I didn't know was that the leasing was a mandatory condition of the agreement as was allowing tourists to climb. I wonder what will happen in 2085.

An example of "please don't climb" signs (from the cultural centre pamphlet):
"The existing Uluru climb is the traditional route taken by ancestral men on their arrival at Uluru. Because this path is of great spiritual significance, Anangu [the traditional Aboriginal owners of Uluru] rarely climb Uluru. Although Anangu have given permission for visitors to climb Uluru, Anangu prefer if you choose to respect the cultural significance of Uluru and do not climb. As well, the traditional owners have a duty to safeguard visitors. Anangu feel great sadness when a person dies or is hurt on their land."

Honestly, even if there weren't people asking me directly not to climb I don't think I would have. While I can understand the urge to do it, once you see all the people trekking up it (the Anangu call the climbers "minga" or ants), you realize that it takes away from some of the sites majesty and mystery. The recommended alternative, which we chose, was to walk around the base of Uluru (about 7 miles). This turned out to be well worth doing. In addition to being amazed by all the varied folds, fissures and caves of the monolith, it was great to experience it pretty much on our own as not too many people ventured all the way around. The only negative was how dehydrated we got. There are signs virtually everywhere warning folk to drink tons of water, and we had taken them fairly seriously bringing along 2 water bottles. However the recommended amount was something like 2 liters an hour and that seemed a bit excessive. We figured that was for the height of summer maybe, after all it didn't feel that hot really. Well, all I can say is that I wouldn't recommend going there in the summer. We were definitely dragging by the end of our walk and you could actually feel the difference the water made. By that night I noticed my skin was flaking off my arms and legs, my lips were raw and puffy and the skin on my hands and face looked like it had aged 10 years it was so cracked and wrinkly. Dylan's top lip split. I kid you not it was nutty. At one point I washed my hands and didn't dry them to see how fast the moisture would evaporate and it was less than a minute. To top it off there are little flies that try to sip out the moisture from your eyes and the edges of your mouth. Not a spot to go get lost.

Which was too bad, because I sort of fancied the idea of trekking out into the outback a ways to really get that "on your own" feeling. After going about 500 feet though it quickly became obvious that that was a really, really bad idea. Because it is so flat and there are no houses or trees you think it should be easy to see where you are going; unfortunately that also means there are no landmarks to keep you oriented. I suppose as long as we'd kept Uluru in sight we could have given it a shot.....maybe next time...when we have an aquifer of water and snake repellant.

In the afternoon we headed out to Kjata Tjuta (or The Olgas) for a quick gorge walk and a view of the sunset over these rounded, marble like hills. As you can probabaly tell, these are formations which description does no justice to, and photographs only go so far. The experience of being there with the dryness, the angle of the light, the wide openess, and the feel of the strange rock under your feet is one of those 'have to be there' moments. The tough thing for me is that no matter how hard I try to "be in the moment" there is always something compelling creeping in at me. Hunger, fatigue, the knowledge that we have to leave soon so we can stay with the tour buses since we're not supposed to be driving in the dark.....maybe it is only the places that we take for granted and experience everyday where we can truly just have the moment...or maybe a moment is just that, a moment, and it is greedy to expect it to go on for any longer..... Enough sentimentalizing from me! We went back to our digs, hung out for a bit at the BBQ listening to a guy singing a reggae version of "Waltzing Matilda", and went to bed.

Luckily for us, since we are not morning people, the sun didn't rise until around 7:30 (that near the equator the days are about 10 or 11 hours long year round), so we were able to see sunrise creep up Uluru. It was the most company I have ever had for a sunrise. Even some dingos were out howling in the scrub. Maybe I was just sleepy, but I think sunset was more dramatic.

So we said goodbye to Uluru and pushed off back to the Olgas for another long hike through gorges and up enscarpments. The Olgas are made up of different rock than Uluru and we were surprised to see so much hidden water and grass on the tops of the domes. No wonder these formations were sacred to the desert anangu! I spotted our only lizard :)

And then, too soon, we were back on the long road to Alice Springs. We had an agonizing moment trying to decide whether or not to pick up two aboriginal men on the side of the road next to a car that looked like something out of a Rob Zombie video. In the end we didn't, but we felt rather guilty about it. Were we vulnerable tourists or paranoid losers? I don't know. Had it been a less frequented road I think we would have been compelled to stop no matter how dodgy things seemed; the environment is just too harsh to leave people for long.

Our only other adventure on the way back was a strange dashboard light that dinged, said rest, and looked like a mug of coffee. We stopped, got a drink and stretched our legs and never heard from it again. Guess the car wanted a coffee break. (There was no manual in the car...why put a manual in a rental car driving places with no gas, water or human habitation? Wouldn't come in handy would it?)

I got giddy coming into town and hearing Men at Work on the radio, I admit it. Part of that was just because there was no radio for most of the drive and the one cd we'd bought (the Killers) was starting to drive me insane. We splurged on gourmet bush tucker for dinner and it was suprisingly good. Dylan had the "bush medley" of emu, gator, camel (his favorite) and kangaroo, and I had barrimundi, a local fish (well, not local to Alice Springs obviously, but you know what I mean). We complemented the meal with 4xxxx beer which Dylan said tasted like every other Australian beer, and a cabernet sauvignon from the area which was pretty good considering I hate wine.

On our last morning we clibed Anzac Hill for a view of Alice Springs and browsed the shops looking for a piece of aboriginal art to call out to us. We felt rushed though, and were concerned about supporting shops that were exploitative of the artists so we ended up leaving empty handed. We didn't really care though as we were just happy to have seen some interesting (and some crappy) art that we didn't normally encounter.

Recommendations if you go to Alice Springs: Mostly just go. It seems way out of the way, but it was so worth it. I really wish I'd had more time to see the MacDonnell Ranges and Kings Canyon. Book lodging at Uluru pretty far in advance so you don't get stuck paying crazy amounts (even the campground is steep, but better than the alternatives). Leave yourself time to visit the art galleries.