Day 63/66: 21-24th August Alice Springs. Alice, Alice, who the hell is Alice?

I was looking forward to another place to base ourselves from for four nights and not have to pack up every day, see some different things and be in a bigger town again. Our park is outside of town, and we knew that. We drive through town and kept going. A few k’s out of town, we turn right and drive another 10k. Definitely out of town. When we get to the park, it is spectacularly perched alongside the ranges and across from a dry riverbed. The park itself has a lot of long termers who have made their little patch their own in a unique way. At night, twice we are visited by a kangaroo and the park felt safe. The amenities however, well. There was no camp kitchen which we need in bad weather (two days and nights we had very gusty winds, and had to pack up the awning at 3am one morning) and the showers had an interesting configuration not seen since the great recession of the 1920’s.

The men’s consisted of three showers – each with their own shower curtain. Each one of these had a space adjacent that was the same size as the shower, which also used shower curtains to form three of the walls. As previously described in another post, it is hard enough to get changed in most camp showers due to their small size. Most of the time, when you bend over to put your pants on, your bum is likely to press against an already wet wall, and also potentially push you over. Here, the danger was bending over to put on said pants and brushing up against someone else doing the same manoeuvre in the stall next to you.

Thankfully, I didn’t get to dance cheek to cheek with anyone here, but with one shower I had successfully cleansed in beautifully hot water, and then had to do the underpants twister game. Having dried myself I attempt to get dressed. I am standing on one leg, about to attempt to strategically place the other through the leg hole, whilst balancing myself with my elbow against a solid wall. Concentrating real hard in my attempt to not topple over when someone enters the shower area, opens my curtain and says “Oh, sorry mate”, and then leaves the room. He doesn’t even stay for a shower? What is he doing in there in the first place? Surely we should have danced before he saw me naked?

I do need to go back to our teachings from high school about Australia. I will be the first to admit that I don’t know enough about my home land and this trip is about helping to help rectify that. In school, we were taught that the middle of Australia is a dry, hot and dusty place. Unbearable heat. I have now learned that in winter, it can get below 0 at night and we had a couple close to that. During the day, we didn’t even crack 20. Melbourne is going through a terrible winter but their nights were topping ours! Alice Springs even has a beanie festival to recognise how cold it gets there. We are up to four blankets, thermals and a jumper – and an attempt to buy a heated blanket resulted in nothing but just a blanket and had to be returned. With no camp kitchen and literally nothing else around, we were confined early to the van.

Alice Springs itself was confronting. There are a lot of people around with not enough to do, and just hanging around. The police presence, sirens and yelling in the streets reminded me of Capetown. It didn’t feel unsafe, but an unsettling feeling of what has happened to the indigenous population is there. On the surface it is not great, but the underlying issues are massive from a number of fronts and it won’t be solved overnight. A visit to the old gaol didn’t help that feeling, and it reminded me of going to Robin Island in South Africa. It is hard to break the cycle.

Tourist highlights though were the West MacDonnell ranges with Simpson’s Gap, Elleroy Big Hole billabong and Standley Chasm – spectacular rock formations that look the same as in the photo’s but different in scale in real life. We have seen many sunsets so far, but at Standley Chasm, you wait for the sun to hit the middle between the two sides to see both sides light up around noon– very Temple of Doom stuff.

Personal highlight was bumping into and meeting Andrew S. Gilbert in an Aboriginal Art museum. He may not be a household name, but some people may know him from the series Round The Twist. I know him from being in the Dish, as the mayor’s (Roy Billing) offsider. So, it followed up nicely after seeing Forbes where The Dish was filmed and the seeing the actual dish. He was also the lead in a quirky Aussie film called the Back Yard Ashes as the character Dougie Waters. Not quite up to The Dish, but a pleasant watch with a few laughs along the way. Nice to say G’day. No selfies though, we are both camping and weren’t up to our photographic best.