A Town Like Alice

Marian and me on the outskirts of Alice Springs, a town we never expected to visit. Still 460 km across the red-but-now-green centre to Uluru.

Dawn, Alice Springs.

We’re sitting on the front step of our budget hotel, waiting to be picked up for our three-day/two-night “Backpackers’ Outback Safari.” For a series of reasons, beginning, perhaps, with declining levels of caffeine and no evident source of replenishment, the experience is feeling a tad surrealistic. More likely it’s because we’ve long-known of Alice Springs, but never expected to visit it.  

Our intended destination is actually Uluru, Australia’s most famous natural landmark – once known as Ayers Rock, now having reverted to aboriginal ownership and name. Alice Springs is the nearest city to Uluru, but still leaves us with a 460 km. ground trip southwest, across what is normally this country’s “red centre.” As it happens, the Outback this year has posted its heaviest rainfall in recorded history. Desert red has turned to green scrub, stretching on seemingly forever.

Having arrived the previous afternoon, we were able to test Marian’s warmish literary memory of “A Town Like Alice” against the real thing. For me, Alice proved to be a town like Grande Prairie, Alberta, circa 1978, not just for its size and look, but for the apparent societal divide between aboriginal and non-aboriginal populations – and the evident associated issues. 

A government poster advertising a long list of buying restrictions entertained us as we cooled our heels in the glacial bottle store queue. Then, in turn, I was carefully “carded” to ensure my name isn’t on the Northern Territory’s alcohol prohibition list.

This particular morning, we unexpectedly find the hotel owner at the front desk. He’s been up all night, he tells us. “Our dark friends were getting a little out of hand around town.”

Like Grande Prairie way back when, a visible minority sure takes the work out of identifying troublemakers.