Alice

I was told by a Victorian in Darwin that he had “never seen so many Aborigines in a single place and that I should watch myself in Alice”. It is interesting that he, as an Australian, should express surprise that Aborigines do actually live in significant numbers in some parts of Australia, and, that he feels the need to warn foreigners about them. A German guy called Magnus that I met in Alice said that he was warned in Coober Pedy never to take a lift from a “black fella”.

Australia’s white-dominated culture regards the indigenous man with ambivalence at best and suspicion at worst. Not much appears to have changed since the settler days when the Aborigine caused a nuisance; they are still wholly incompatible with the white Australian endeavour. The Aborigine, however, has been significantly sidelined in this society over the years and now most urban centres are almost completely depleted of the original inhabitants of this country.

Alice Springs has around six or seven times more Aborigines than the national average, which is apparently only 1%. So it is Alice that acted for me as a sort of looking glass into what I have always been told about and never witnessed, and that is the invisible – but all too real – barrier between black and white in this country.

It is Australia’s apparently unsolvable conundrum. It is an irrelevant fact that this problem was created by white peoples’ actions in the past. What matters is what this liberal, tolerant democracy can do about removing a barrier which leads to, amongst other things, a 17 year difference in life expectancy between the ethnicities.

Kevin Rudd said sorry last year which was bound to have warmed the hearts of millions of urban liberals but done little else. Besides, Australia is a small country and has a lot to worry about at the moment. It’s coffers are reeling from the great onslaught of the GFC and, maybe even more scary, Afghans are arriving by the boatload.

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So anyway, Alice is a small town with a disproportionate number of scruffy Aborigines. I was only there for two nights and a day, which I think is plenty.

This is the Todd River which runs (underground maybe) through Alice.

The town from a nearby hill.

Another picture of the Todd running parallel to a road I never went on. It might be the road to Adelaide.

The road to Uluru runs through that gap in the hills. A golf course / oasis is in the foreground.

The main street in Alice.

…and the famous flying doctors!