Red Centre 1 - A Town Called Alice

[The first of a series of posts about our Red Centre adventure.]

The “Red Centre” is aptly named.  It’s land – some of the oldest on earth – burns red-orange from oxidized iron in the soil, which tints nearly everything you see.

Our first glimpse of Australia’s desert lands was from a Boeing 717 as it glided into the airport at Alice Springs.  Even though we were told it had rained a couple of weeks before, we were surprised at how green it was, and this surprise lasted most of our visit.

Alice (which gave its name to at least one TV series and several movies) is an Outback town turned tourist stopover, the jumping off point for trips to Uluru, Kings Canyon, and the West McDonald range.  It feels just like that … the small downtown is crowded with souvenir shops, Aboriginal art galleries, pubs and restaurants, tour offices, and tourists like us of all ages and national origins. 

The town straddles the Todd River, which apparently roared during the rains before we came.  The river was, however, but a memory when we arrived, a dry, dusty bed of red sand.

Alice’s official population of 28,000 swells during tourist season, as people come for work, and then shrinks as the town gets quiet and the temperatures rise.  The income disparities brought by this boom and bust are stark –Aboriginal community institutions and enterprises are noticeable, but so is the poverty of Aboriginal people we saw around town, seemingly lost in the midst of “civilization.”  Another manifestation of the effects of colonialization and displacement.

We arrived two days before our tour was to start, so we explored Alice a bit on foot and bike.  Probably the highlight for us was the Desert Park (very much like the Desert Museum outside Tucson, for those of you who’ve been there), where we learned about the flora and fauna of the three main eco-zones of the desert: the woodland, the riverside, and the land of sand.  We saw a great bird of prey presentation, which included this Southern Boobook.