We set off fairly early in the morning from Coober Pedy. The beauty of the Stuart Highway, though, is that there is so little traffic that you can really let yourself fly. It was 700 kilometers from Coober Pedy to Alice Springs and I was determined to see how fast we could get there. After all, it's not like there's anything in between, really.
Driving out of Coober Pedy the land remained rocky and bare, a true desert. Kilometer after featureless kilometer clicked away as we sped north. However, slowly but surely, the landscape began to change. Here and there shrubs began to appear, later whole clumps and by the time we hit the Northern Territory border, full trees. That summer, with the brilliant end to the Australian drought, the Red Centre had been transformed into the Green Centre. Everywhere there seemed to be an abundance of plant life. The last time I was in the area, in 2005, the ground was much more bare, though perhaps not as bare as I remembered. Still, to see Australia's interior so wonderfully green was quite the treat.
The border with the Northern Territory wasn't much more than a rest stop so we continued on, refuelling at a roadhouse called Kulgera. Onward we drove until finally the traffic picked up a bit and we could see many cars and trucks in the distance. We drove through Heavitree Gap, a pass in the hills, and drove into Alice Springs. We'd covered the 700 kilometers in less than 5 hours. We had plenty of time to explore the city before we were to meet up with our couchsurf hosts. It would also be a chance for us to rest as we'd been on the move, more or less continuously for about a week. That is the unfortunate consequence of changed plans.
We walked around Alice Springs a bit. Isabella remarked how much smaller it was than she thought it would be. Isabella thought Alice Springs to be a proper city of 100 000+ souls, not the sort of large dusty town of about 20 000 it is. We wandered around the city center and looked at the parks and the dry bed of the Todd River. We also took a drive to the top of ANZAC Hill, which offered a great view of Alice Springs. I have to say, though, that Isabella also encountered her first taste of a less savoury side of Australia --- the relationship between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Australians.
I think that Alice Springs is the strangest city in Australia. If you ever want to see what post-apartheid South Africa looked like, I imagine that Alice Springs is pretty close. The dynamic in that city is so unusual. If you should keep in mind one thing, it is that the relationship between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Australians is very complex and founded on decades of mistrust. There are constant attempts to normalize relations between the 2 groups with some success but Alice Springs seems to be a world apart. What strikes non-locals the most, especially foreigners, is that aboriginals and non-aboriginals do not mix; they seem to be invisible to each other. It's almost as if they exist on 2 different worlds and never the twain shall meet. The aboriginals keep to themselves and talk amongst themselves, all the while ignoring the non-aboriginals; the non-aboriginals do likewise. In all the cities of Australia I've been to, none has this dichotomy on such a scale. I can't imagine a stranger form of existence.
Isabella and I decided to visit the School of the Air. This is an educational institution that provides learning to children in remote communities and stations, as well as the children of itinerant station hands. Its catchment is several thousand square kilometers but it has barely 100 pupils. Originally, the School of the Air was a radio service but in recent years it is mostly run online and beamed via satellite to pupils' homes. The lessons are contained in packs that the parents buy, or are subsidized, and the children complete the lessons and send them back for evaluation. This is under the supervision of a nanny or the parents. In the School of the Air there were examples of student projects and they were all basically the same sort of thing you'd find anywhere else --- model solar systems, model bridges, paintings, etc. Once they reach high school age, the children are sent to boarding schools as the School of the Air doesn't go beyond a certain grade. I think Isabella and I agreed that the enjoyment factor of our education would have been greatly enhanced had we been students of the School of the Air.
From the School of the Air, Isabella and I took a walk around the old telegraph station. This is where Alice Springs was born and it lies right beside the original Alice spring. This watering hole is actually not a spring but part of the Todd River's water table. John Stuart, the first recorded European explorer through these parts, happened upon this water and named it Alice Springs, after Alice Todd, the wife of his boss. Stuart was blazing a trail for a telegraph line to connect Adelaide to Darwin and, by extension, the rest of Australia to the rest of the world. The town that grew up was originally called Stuart until the 1930s when it was renamed Alice Springs. Isabella and I hiked a bit in the hot sun before we met up with our hosts.
Our hosts were 3 radiographers at the local hospital and were very gracious hosts. One of them, Yuk, took us out that evening to explore Alice Springs' many pubs. Jo, the girlfriend of Chris, the other host, did a very motherly thing and told us to call her if we got in trouble. Nothing happened to us that night, although we did see some rambunctiousness. We were sitting at a table in one of the pubs when all of a sudden a scuffle broke out. It wasn't long before those involved were ejected and took their grievance to the street. Luckily it didn't escalate into something more serious but Isabella and I were told that this happens regularly. Oh well, just another part of the rough and tumble of life in the outback.
Despite this, our hosts assured us that they had something special planned for us the next day, something that not many tourists get to see.
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