We were expecting AS to be an outback town, rough around the edges, but it has definitely the feel of a tourist town with lots of art galleries, shops, and a big air-conditioned mall with a Target.
Bojangles is the local saloon with a 15’ crocodile and 1930-vintage Harley hanging from the ceiling, along with 100’s of other miscellany. We spotted the following newspaper article on the wall, which we thought you would enjoy, especially Naisch, who has a great interest in snakes, as well as a history of somewhat analagous mishaps. Incidentally, the brown snake is one of the most deadly snakes, but fortunately it did not invenomate the victim, who therefore lived, but suffered irreparable psychological trauma.
What did we do in AS? Birdwatching at the Botanic Garden and the Water Treatment facility (Nan gets to visit many places off the beaten track), several exhibitions of aborigine art (Alice is a big aboriginal art center), and then a long drive out in the bush to see an impressive gorge and swimming hole.
At the local museum we saw marvellous landscape paintings by the aborigine painter, Albert Namatijira (1902-1959) who is a dominant figure in 20th century aboriginal art. He received much international recognition for his paintings and as a result was granted Australian citizenship in 1957. I was astonished to learn that he was the first aborigine to receive citizenship, as all aborigines were wards of the state until then. All aborigines were granted citizenship in 1967.
There is a large aborigine community in and around Alice, and a thriving aborigine art community, both in Alice and in surrounding outback communities. Unfortunately little of the art can be photographed. The example above is from a public mosaic and definitely not as interesting as most of the aborigine art we have seen.
This is the first time we have seen a significant community of aborigines, and what we see is very disturbing because clearly they are not assimilated into white society. The aborigines we see in Alice appear to be either homeless people, who may have been outcast from their communties for drinking or other bad behavior (their social code appears to be very strict and rigid), or artists selling their work.
The whole subjective of aborigines is both fascinating (their 50,000 year history and culture) and appalling (the “stolen generation” and terrible treatment by Australia), and the obvious fact that they remain completely unassimilated, in part out of their own wishes to maintain their lifestyle and culture. We are learning a great deal on this subject and I will discuss this in a separate blog.
After 3 days in Alice we drove sw 300 miles to Uluru, also known as Ayer's rock. On the way we encountered a huge ( 1m) black eagle feasting on kangaroo road kill. Sorry, no photo. We also met this young man from Japan who is doing a solo bike tour of Australia from Sydney to Mebourne, and now north across the outback to Darwin...probably over 3000 miles. Most impressive.
Photo of the road to Uluru...which was very unexeciting except for the occassional road kill being enjoyed by raptors.
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