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Published: August 26th 2005
Alice Springs...
guess where i am?! :)well hello there everybody!
so i made it to alice springs! it's absolutely totally completely and utterly in the middle of no-where. maybe i should start believing my lonely planet guide book...
ah, and its nice and hot - oh the novelty of wearing cropped trousers, strappy tops and birkenstocks! yay! (this is more like it...)
had to get up at like 6.00am on wednesday morning to finish off packing and get to the airport in time, nick gave me a lift which saved on the headache of me trying to catch a bus. (me and public transport in australia, not a good combination. i believe that we have established this now.) the flight was absolutely fine and even though it was 2 and a half hours, after the evil evil 22 hour flight to get here it seemed like nothing! i had a window seat - yay! which of course meant that i spend the majority of the flight peering out of the window 😊 the scenery that we were flying over was amazing, i've never seen anything like it before. there were mud flats and mountains and tiny little villages in the middle of no-where and an
yay for pigeons with mohicans!
as much as logic tells me that the pigeons are meant to be like this, there's part of me that totally wants to believe that there is someone out there with a huge tub of hair gel and an awful lot of spare time... awful lot of red soil and dried up rivers. in flight entertainment not required! (although the movie "the interpreter" was showing, which i listened to, book-on-tape style. ah, and the hilarity of it all - the plane landed before the movie finished and as they turned it off, the captain says "well, i'm sorry about that, but you can all sleep easy knowing that everyone lives happily ever after and they all get the punishment or reward that they deserve". hehe!)
alice springs has the teeniest tiniest airport i have seen! with totally non-existent customs as well.
so i got the bus from the airport into town, dumped my things and then went off for a wander around "the alice" (as it is apparently known in australia). its such a sleepy quiet little town. the shops are very touristy - boomerangs, didgeridoos, cork hats, camping supplies, travel companies galore.
after i came to the conclusion that buying a didgeridoo was probably not the best idea and seeing as i already have a hat i went and got some lunch in a little restaurant called the red ochre (or something like that...) - i had the chilli dukkah kangaroo
salad and it was soooooo yummy!! (didn't taste anything like the kangaroo that we had in walkabout rozi!)
i wandered around alice a little more, found that there is in fact not a lot to do here and then booked myself on a 3 day 4 wheel drive camping safari to Uluru (ayers rock to those of you who don't know)!!!!!!!! really excited about it, i leave at 6.00am on saturday morning and get back to alice springs on monday night after 2 days of camping in the outback!
ooooh, that's another thing about alice springs (whilst i remember) - the place is absolutely crawling (for want of a better word) with aboriginies (or abbos as they are often more 'endearingly' referred to.) i don't know what i expected, but their skin is so so dark. they really are black. and they don't appear to do anything. they just all sit around the town all day doing nothing. absolutely everywhere and anywhere. i don't know how to put this without sounding biggoted or something like that, but i'm just trying to convey to you all what it's like. there's a very distinct divide between the aboriginal community and
the white people in the town, and i don't know why, but they tend to make you feel uneasy as you walk past them. apparently you should try to stay away from them and not go out on your own in the evening. eep. but i should say that they obviously aren't all like that. this is just what i've encountered and heard from other people.
had a bit of a "moment" on wednesday night when i really really wanted to come home - was feeling really lonely and realising just how far away from anyone i knew i was. but, after a bit of a cry i got it out of my system. i guess that i'm going to feel like that sometimes, but i can't let it get to me. and i still have so many things that i want to do while i'm here! so yeah, worry ye not, i'm ok now 😊
on thursday i got up (sort of) early and decided that i was going to be a tourist, so i donned my spangly new backpack and went for a walk in the todd river 😊 panic ye not! it's a dry river
mr croc
now tell me that it doesn't look like plastic?! for most of the year 😊 for some reason the local aboriginies like to sit in the river. and do nothing. um, ok. i walked quite a way and then headed back into town. i went to the royal flying doctor service, alice springs control station. however i'd just missed the tour so i went across to the alice springs reptile centre where i had also just missed the tour. dammit!!! (i'm so good at stuff like this!!!) to kill time until the tours (which i was determined i would be going on!!) i went to a cafe called the lane and had some lunch.
post-food, i went to the reptile centre. it was so good! the talk that one of the staff gave was great - funny, informative and we all got to hold the lizards and the snake that she told us about. i even got a kiss off a blue-tongued lizard, hehe 😊 i had such a good time!!! oooh, we even got a talk on what to do if you come across a snake in australia. (surprisingly, it doesn't involve runnin screaming in the other direction, at least not at first!!) it's only a little
place, but in my opinion any bigger would have been overdoing it. some of the lizards that they had in there were so strange and its weird to think that these creatures that, until today, i had never even heard of are so widespread and prolific all across australia! they had venomous snakes and even a saltwater crocodile called terry 😊 (which, when i went to look at, i couldn't see anywhere, quite amazing considering its a bloody great huge 6-foot thing. i looked everywhere. and then, after about 5 minutes, realised that it was the "realistic looking plastic crocodile" that i had seen at the other end of the enclosure. ooops. blonde moment. in my defence, it totally looked like it was plastic. and it wasn't moving!!!)
after that i went across to the flying doctor service for the tour. its amazing when they tell you all about it and the area that they have to cover with their services - the alice springs centre covers an area
larger than the entire uk. it just doesn't even begin to compute!
i then went to adelaide house which was the first hospital in central australia. it's only a
the alice spring
the original (almost always) dry spring that the town was named after small museum, in the actual house and it couldn't have taken me any more than about 20 minutes to look around, but afterwards, one of the old ladies who volunteered there made me a cup of coffee and even though it was closing, they didn't kick me out and i sat there for good half an hour after it had closed talking to the volunteers who run the place. they were so kind and nice to me, asking all about me, what i was doing in alice, warning me to be careful and not go out at night on my own. they really made me feel welcome, which was so nice 😊 the old man that i was talking to moved here from belfast 10 years ago and he does community work within the aboriginal communities around alice springs. it was really interesting asking him why he lived here and what it was like, get a local's point of view on it all. he even recommended a good english pub in the town and said that he would be there with his friends tomorrow evening if i wanted some compant. obviously not going to go drinking with some strange old
flaming galahs!
they are everywhere! (not just in neighbours :)) man, but the sentiment seemed kind. all in all, i would have to say that i had an absolutely lovely afternoon 😊
was talking to a guy from japan last night who has been here for 10 months (australia, not alice springs). he did tell me his name. but it was japanese. so yeah, i don't remember what it was. anyhoo, he was showing me all his pictures from around australia. he's been living in cairns and brisbane for most of the time he's been in oz, so he's given me some recommendations of things to do whilst i'm there. and it turns out (spooky) that he's on the same flight to cairns as i am on tuesday! so at least i'll maybe have a buddy for the flight 😊
today... i hired a bike, lol, go me! must say, i looked very cool sporting a lovely blue cycling helmet, hehe 😊 first stop the school of the air, which is about 3km from central alice i think (seemed a lot further though!!) the school of the air was set up so that children who live in the outback on cattle stations and homesteads hundreds of miles from "civilisation" get an education. it was really interesting! they have about 12 schools of the air in australia, but the one in alice is the original. apparently the alice school covers an area of over a million square kilometers and has about 112 pupils all of whom receive schooling from pre-school age up to the age of about 12 when most of them go on to boarding school. they have radio lessons and video lessons (via the internet) and they also do a lot of work via correspondence. they only come to the school 4 times a year in order to build their social skills with other children and do things that we would probably consider "normal", like going to the cinema, mcdonalds etc. its just another world. when i got there they were having assembly, via webcams and we all got to watch, brilliant experience! it didn't take too much time out of the day either - one of the employees gave a brief talk about the history, what they do blah blah blah, etc then we watched a ten minute video about one family who use the school. would totally recommend for people to go there if they ever get the chance! it makes you realise just how lucky we are to get normal schooling - although the school of the air looks like good fun it seems to be a lot of hard work!!!
ummm, ok. next i rode up to the alice springs telegraph station (i think most people have heard of it??) which was probably another 2km away. not as good as i expected it to be 😞 its the original telegraph homestead and they have a little museum section in each of the buildings. i think the highlight was getting to see the original alice spring (obviously what the town is now named after), behind the telegraph station. alas, because there is a total lack of rain in the northern territory the spring is almost always (including today) dry. but apparently there is water under ground. so tis all good 😊 i rode back along the todd river walk which seemed like a great idea and although it probably saved me time in the long run, me trying to get a bike up a set of about 30 stone cut steps was not fun!!!!!!
i think that's about it for now, its really really hot today and i have to get ready for camping in the morning so i haven't really done much this afternoon!
hope you are all well and stuff, i'll write more soon and hopefully post oodles of beautiful pictures when i get back from uluru!
lins
xx
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Matt
non-member comment
May be the divide is caused by aborigines disliking white people for stealing there land and turning them into a tourist attraction? Could've been worse though...atleast they werent all shot or starved like Native American Indians