Alice Springs

For those of you who have been reading this and giving feedback through Angel and the rest of my family, thanks. It's nice to know people are reading this. I apologize for not keeping up to date over the past several weeks but there hasn't been much to write about. Hopefully that's about to change so stay tuned.

In the meantime it's a good opportunity to catch up on my trip to the center of the country. After I got done in Sydney I was off to Alice Springs, which I used as a jumping-off point for Uluru, Kata Tjuta, and Kings Canyon. Uluru and Kata Tjuta are also known as Ayers Rock and the Olgas, respectively, but as mainstream Australia has become more aware of Aboriginal culture these landmarks are becoming better known by their traditional Aboriginal names. All are well known but Uluru in particular is one of the most photographed landmarks in world.

Most people get to these places through Alice Springs. I had a day to spend in town so I gave myself the walking tour. I had read that it was home to nearly 30,000 people and growing rapidly so I expected a busy town. I could not have been more wrong. If nearly 30,000 people live in "Alice" as it is known, then most of them are either invisible or were on vacation that week. School was in and the holidays weren't for another month so vacation seemed unlikely. More on the invisible residents of Alice later.

I ambled through a couple Aboriginal art galleries on my way to the one thing in Alice that I was keen as mustard to see: the Royal Flying Doctor museum. The RFD is a medical service that provides emergency care to rural Australians who live so far away from urban centers that conventional emergency services aren't practical for them. Alice Springs is just about the geographical center of the country but isn't close to anything else. In a quirky way that is oh so Australian, its extreme isolation makes it the perfect place for the hub of the RFD network.

Lots of museums I've been to are filled exclusively with old stuff, but not the RFD museum. The museum touches on the history of the RFD but emphasizes the RFD's important role in contemporary outback life. The RFD is so integral to the security of outback residents that some households maintain private airstrips just so the RFD will have a place to land in case of emergency. In addition to flying ambulances, the RFD provides medical chests with drugs and equipment to outback residents, and will dispense advice on how to use them by radio. Everything in the chests is numbered, which helps clarify potentially confusing instructions. They even have an observation room where I watched dispatchers take calls and plot the day's flights. These dispatchers often have to share microphones with doctors giving critical advice to caregivers in order to keep victims alive until the RFD arrives on scene.

Like many things in Australia the RFD has its share of amusing anecdotes. My favorite concerns an old stockman who's wife became ill. The stockman radioed the RFD for advice, who prescribed a single pill from one of the vials in the cattle station's RFD chest. The stockman had been less than fastidious in his maintenance of the chest's contents, and found that he was out of the required medicine. Not to be deterred, he administered enough medicines from the other numbered vials to add up to the number on the vial that had been prescribed. Apparently outback medicine is equal to the sum of its parts, because the stockman soon radioed the RFD that his wife "came right straight away".

On the way back to my hostel I walked by the Todd River. The term "river" is a bit of a misnomer for the Todd. It's really a dry gulley that gets a little damp once in a great while. When I was there the "river" hadn't flowed for six months or so. Every year the town has a cardboard boat race down the Todd. Contestants have to construct a boat to enter, but rather than paddle them down the river they sprint down the dry riverbed carrying, dragging, or wearing their craft as they go. The organizers are quite proud that this event is the only boat race in the world that is cancelled in the unlikely event that the race course is actually wet.

Aboriginal culture is prominent in Alice Springs. There are several Aboriginal art galleries in town that appear to generate tidy sums for the indigenous communities, and many Aboriginal people work in the tourism industry as guides, for the government as park rangers, or running their own businesses. There is growing pressure to conduct the tourism industry that drives Alice Springs' economy in a manner that is not only sensitive to Aboriginal culture, but that emphasizes the Aboriginal perspective on natural and human history, and empowers and benefits the Aboriginal communities around Alice Springs.

This brings me back to the invisible residents of the town. A progressive approach to tourism has not benefitted all Aborigines equally. After walking along the Todd for a few minutes I had noticed quite a few Aboriginal people coming and going across the channel, and it became clear that there was a sizeable group of them living on the outskirts of town. I talked with a townie about it and she confirmed that there are quasi-settlements on the fringes of town where some Aborigines live in deplorable conditions, and that substance abuse is rampant in these communities. According to her the people I saw in the riverbed were members of these communities. Tourism drives the Alice economy, but poor inebriated indigenous people don't make for a pleasing tourism experience. These folks are the invisible part of Alice Springs' population.

Photos:

1. The nerve center of the Alice Springs RFD hub. These dispatchers were taking emergency calls as I watched and had one patient with a life threatening injury in transit when I was there.

2. The mighty Todd River.