Thursday, December 13, 2001
Visiting Alice Springs, center of Australia
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Australians have a special place in their hearts for Alice Springs, a town of 30,000 if that many, smack in the middle of the arid, mostly desert landscape that makes up 90 percent of the continent. It is the geographic center of this strange country, the size of the US, with 100 million wild kangaroos, 170 million wild possums (who will, if not controlled soon, destroy the country’s agriculture, as the wild rabbits almost did, once), millions of feral camels and 19 million friendly people (some think of them also as wild, or at least uninhibited). We came here in October, with the onset of the Australian Spring heat, when flowers bloom, just before the rainy season which lasts into March.
The Australians live on the patches of farable Oceanside land, that soon turns into the less fertile "bush" and, eventually, "outback" desert in which only well adapted human and animal dwellers can survive. Many explorers have perished, trying to cross the continent.
Alice Springs is in the Red Center, a fertile large oasis in the Northern Territory desert. It is also the home of 4,000 Aboriginals, the largest concentration of the indigenous Australians in the country, strange people who retain their hunter/gatherer habits and skills. Once hunted by the whites, with their children taken away to be brought up in Christian missions and homes, they have assumed their legitimate place in the economy and society. In NT, through the Aboriginal Land Rights laws enacted in the past 25 years, they have also gained ownership of one-half of the land. They vote and are represented in the Parliament. By the way, Australian registered voters must vote in every election, else they are fined $25 (American), another strange custom.. With all that, although many Aboriginals work in the mainstream economy, they tend to live in native settlements, and the men occasionally disappear on "walkabouts," traditional secret treks into the desert, where they renew their survival skills and relive the mysteries of life.
A white guide told us of growing up on a cattle station in the desert with an Aboriginal nannie (although aboriginal is an adjective, it is capitalized and appears to have been turned into a noun that conveys more of a sense of respect than Aborigine, and I shall use it accordingly), who periodically took him to walkabouts and taught him the skills of the natives. He knows how to dig up the roots of the witchety bush and open them to find the 12-in white worm that can be eaten either rough or cooked; he has learned to recognize the edible roots, fruit and berries, and the sweet leaves of the honey grevillea bush, all essential parts of "bush tucker." He can throw a light boomerang that will circle a flock of birds ready to fly away and keep them down, and a heavy hunting boomerang with a club head that will break a kangaroo’s leg and slow him up, to be hunted down and killed. More stories about ‘roo hunting later.
How does a child grow up in the wilderness, hundreds of miles from a school? There is a whole story about the School of the Air, established through a radio station in AS decades ago. A radio teacher provides lesson plans, sends out study material and reviews homework. My guide was a radio pupil, up to high school, and is a great supporter of the effort, which has spread throughout Australia. We noted that Indigenous Australian children were part of the system. This is a good country, trying to make up for past injustices.
Flying Doctors is another service that grew out of AS, involving the employment of six physicians, a number of nurses and a bunch of bush pilots, who lfly out to 800 runways, taking care of emergencies and regular health care. And that is one of a dozen such services in bush Australia.
Todd Mall is the center of life in AS, along with the avenues that radiate from it. It has banks, art stores, bookstores and souvenir dealers, all concentrated in a pretty tree-shaded street. The Red Center is hot, hot, and tourists are advised to wear hats and carry 375 ml water bottles, easily replenished everywhere. The military-looking beige linen bush hat, with snap-up sides, is inexpensive and light, compared to the leather look-alikes.
Camel-riding and hot-air balloon trips are the sporting attractions of AS. Take a camel to breakfast (or lunch) is the common lure to a lengthy trip, but for a circle or two in the rink you pay only $5, including admission, a good introduction to the way people travel in desert. Camels, brought in around 1850, built Mr Todd’s telegraph lines, and also the railroads of Australia., with AS as a central point. The oasis is surrounded by the MacDonnell Ranges, low mountains broken by gaps, results of the tectonic plate drift. AS sits on a fault line.
An introduction to the outback is AS Desert Park, where some 400 desert plants and animals are presented in natural habitats. Hard spinifex is everywhere, the grass of the outback, suitable for hardy animals. The crested pigeons survive there, as well as the beautiful pink and grey cockatoos called galahs, considered nuisances by the farmers. The rangers have befriended several birds of prey and at 3:30 daily they stand in a natural forum, swinging hunks of food on weighted strings in long slow loops around their heads. Out of nowhere, the birds appear and attempt to strike at the targets, first an eagle, then a falcon and a kite. Successful, they retire with their hard-earned gains, and so do we, marveling at the collaboration.
AS attracts about 350,000 tourists a year, a thousand daily, and looking Such movies as the 1994 "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," about three transvestites bringing a gay dress up show to the hard-bitten miners and ranch hands of the desert has made the name known, as did the novel by Philip Wyllie, "A town Called Alice," in the 1950s
A casino called Lasseter’s, although a minor part in the attractions (there are casinos all over Down Under, since the Aussies are inveterate gamblers) does serve the best meal in town, to our knowledge. Walking over at night, from our Rydges Hotel, took us a few hundred yards along the edge of the bush and gave us a sensation of the unknown. You hear the birds and animals, and expect to see a kangaroo looping across the road, to be fed (we visited a few of them, tall and very placid animals, in a game park). All that we needed was to see the Southern Cross overhead. Alas, it was not given to us. But we did see Aboriginals wandering around, along the dry and cemented-down bed of the Todd River .No worry, mate, they were on missions of their own. The dry river is also the site of the annual Henley-on-the-Todd, for which the Aussies, with their sense of humor that involves mocking the Poms (Brits), build balsa wood boats without bottoms and carry them up and down the river bed in teams of four, more or less, whooping and hollering and drinking beer and wine, and sometimes getting starkers in the process..
Wine? Of course, this hardy nation has recently converted to wine, with the great success of Australian red shiraz, merlot and cabernet sauvignons, and their superb cabernet blanc and chardonnay whites. That is what the mates drink, fair dinkum (I kid thee not),
Australians have a special place in their hearts for Alice Springs, a town of 30,000 if that many, smack in the middle of the arid, mostly desert landscape that makes up 90 percent of the continent. It is the geographic center of this strange country, the size of the US, with 100 million wild kangaroos, 170 million wild possums (who will, if not controlled soon, destroy the country’s agriculture, as the wild rabbits almost did, once), millions of feral camels and 19 million friendly people (some think of them also as wild, or at least uninhibited). We came here in October, with the onset of the Australian Spring heat, when flowers bloom, just before the rainy season which lasts into March.
The Australians live on the patches of farable Oceanside land, that soon turns into the less fertile "bush" and, eventually, "outback" desert in which only well adapted human and animal dwellers can survive. Many explorers have perished, trying to cross the continent.
Alice Springs is in the Red Center, a fertile large oasis in the Northern Territory desert. It is also the home of 4,000 Aboriginals, the largest concentration of the indigenous Australians in the country, strange people who retain their hunter/gatherer habits and skills. Once hunted by the whites, with their children taken away to be brought up in Christian missions and homes, they have assumed their legitimate place in the economy and society. In NT, through the Aboriginal Land Rights laws enacted in the past 25 years, they have also gained ownership of one-half of the land. They vote and are represented in the Parliament. By the way, Australian registered voters must vote in every election, else they are fined $25 (American), another strange custom.. With all that, although many Aboriginals work in the mainstream economy, they tend to live in native settlements, and the men occasionally disappear on "walkabouts," traditional secret treks into the desert, where they renew their survival skills and relive the mysteries of life.
A white guide told us of growing up on a cattle station in the desert with an Aboriginal nannie (although aboriginal is an adjective, it is capitalized and appears to have been turned into a noun that conveys more of a sense of respect than Aborigine, and I shall use it accordingly), who periodically took him to walkabouts and taught him the skills of the natives. He knows how to dig up the roots of the witchety bush and open them to find the 12-in white worm that can be eaten either rough or cooked; he has learned to recognize the edible roots, fruit and berries, and the sweet leaves of the honey grevillea bush, all essential parts of "bush tucker." He can throw a light boomerang that will circle a flock of birds ready to fly away and keep them down, and a heavy hunting boomerang with a club head that will break a kangaroo’s leg and slow him up, to be hunted down and killed. More stories about ‘roo hunting later.
How does a child grow up in the wilderness, hundreds of miles from a school? There is a whole story about the School of the Air, established through a radio station in AS decades ago. A radio teacher provides lesson plans, sends out study material and reviews homework. My guide was a radio pupil, up to high school, and is a great supporter of the effort, which has spread throughout Australia. We noted that Indigenous Australian children were part of the system. This is a good country, trying to make up for past injustices.
Flying Doctors is another service that grew out of AS, involving the employment of six physicians, a number of nurses and a bunch of bush pilots, who lfly out to 800 runways, taking care of emergencies and regular health care. And that is one of a dozen such services in bush Australia.
Todd Mall is the center of life in AS, along with the avenues that radiate from it. It has banks, art stores, bookstores and souvenir dealers, all concentrated in a pretty tree-shaded street. The Red Center is hot, hot, and tourists are advised to wear hats and carry 375 ml water bottles, easily replenished everywhere. The military-looking beige linen bush hat, with snap-up sides, is inexpensive and light, compared to the leather look-alikes.
Camel-riding and hot-air balloon trips are the sporting attractions of AS. Take a camel to breakfast (or lunch) is the common lure to a lengthy trip, but for a circle or two in the rink you pay only $5, including admission, a good introduction to the way people travel in desert. Camels, brought in around 1850, built Mr Todd’s telegraph lines, and also the railroads of Australia., with AS as a central point. The oasis is surrounded by the MacDonnell Ranges, low mountains broken by gaps, results of the tectonic plate drift. AS sits on a fault line.
An introduction to the outback is AS Desert Park, where some 400 desert plants and animals are presented in natural habitats. Hard spinifex is everywhere, the grass of the outback, suitable for hardy animals. The crested pigeons survive there, as well as the beautiful pink and grey cockatoos called galahs, considered nuisances by the farmers. The rangers have befriended several birds of prey and at 3:30 daily they stand in a natural forum, swinging hunks of food on weighted strings in long slow loops around their heads. Out of nowhere, the birds appear and attempt to strike at the targets, first an eagle, then a falcon and a kite. Successful, they retire with their hard-earned gains, and so do we, marveling at the collaboration.
AS attracts about 350,000 tourists a year, a thousand daily, and looking Such movies as the 1994 "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," about three transvestites bringing a gay dress up show to the hard-bitten miners and ranch hands of the desert has made the name known, as did the novel by Philip Wyllie, "A town Called Alice," in the 1950s
A casino called Lasseter’s, although a minor part in the attractions (there are casinos all over Down Under, since the Aussies are inveterate gamblers) does serve the best meal in town, to our knowledge. Walking over at night, from our Rydges Hotel, took us a few hundred yards along the edge of the bush and gave us a sensation of the unknown. You hear the birds and animals, and expect to see a kangaroo looping across the road, to be fed (we visited a few of them, tall and very placid animals, in a game park). All that we needed was to see the Southern Cross overhead. Alas, it was not given to us. But we did see Aboriginals wandering around, along the dry and cemented-down bed of the Todd River .No worry, mate, they were on missions of their own. The dry river is also the site of the annual Henley-on-the-Todd, for which the Aussies, with their sense of humor that involves mocking the Poms (Brits), build balsa wood boats without bottoms and carry them up and down the river bed in teams of four, more or less, whooping and hollering and drinking beer and wine, and sometimes getting starkers in the process..
Wine? Of course, this hardy nation has recently converted to wine, with the great success of Australian red shiraz, merlot and cabernet sauvignons, and their superb cabernet blanc and chardonnay whites. That is what the mates drink, fair dinkum (I kid thee not),
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 6:18 PM 
