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Published: October 16th 2006
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Nestled between the West and East MacDonnell ranges, and almost slap-bang in the middle of the entire continent, Alice Springs can claim to be the largest settlement in the Australian interior, a grand title for a town of fewer than 30,000 inhabitants. With all of its shopping, eating and accommodation within a few blocks on the obligatory grid system, it's a compact base from which to plan and subsequently explore the Red Centre. It's also the main place in Australia to buy Aboriginal art, be it the distinctive dot paintings familiar to most people, or more contemporary designs.
There isn't an enormous amount to see in Alice, though one highlight is sunset as seen from ANZAC Hill. I made my visit there at the same time as a school trip, meaning there was little opportunity for quiet reflection. Though in theory I'm now in the desert, there were enough clouds (and even spots of rain) to make the sunset itself well worth it.
The other place I saw here was the Desert Centre just outside of town. Here, 3 distinct desert habitats - desert rivers, sand country, and woodland - have been created with appropriate fauna and flora. A
self-guided audio tour provides a wealth of information, augmented by presentations and ranger walks (I did neither of the latter as I visited the Centre on the morning of the day I was due to drive 450km to Uluru). The most interesting part was the nocturnal exhibition. In light so dim as to resemble moonlight (but which I originally thought was a power failure), there were a number of enclosures and display cases featuring nocturnal creatures such as bilbies, quolls, etc. Best sighting was a trio of thorny devils, which physically resemble leaves, move in a stuttering fashion so as to mimic a wind-blown leaf, have a false head to confuse attackers, gather water via dew forming on their body and the dew being channelled to their mouth by grooves in their skin, eat ants for a living (but only one at a time), and have the cool Latin name Moloch (i.e. devil) Horridus.
My evenings in Alice were generally spent in Bojangles, a friendly pub with saloon doors at the entrance. A large barrel of nuts was available to all patrons, next to a copy of Ned Kelly's famous suit of armour. The weirdness continued with a selection
of pairs of cowboy boots nailed to the ceiling, and reached its zenith in the men's toilets. A fake hinge had been attached to the outer door, resulting in you pushing ineffectually at the real hinge's side of the door, until you either figured it out or a kindly local showed you the way. Once inside, none of the taps were connected to their adjacent faucet, so you had to turn on the tap of the sink next to the one that you wanted to use.
The flipside to this unexpectedly complicated toilet visit was that the bar had its own Internet radio station and web-cam, so that as you were recovering from the confusion with a well-earned beer, your face would be beamed around the world to all the viewers of
Bojangles.
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