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Introduction Sydney Alice Springs Uluru Great Barrier Reef Daintree Rainforest Palm Cove |
The middle of Australia is astoundingly empty: 80% of the population lives on 1% of the land, within a few miles of the coast). The interior is full of harsh desert environments. It is sparsely populated but really quite fascinating, as geologists have stumbled across huge reserves of minerals and biologists have found new types of plants and animals not because of their training, but because of sheer, dumb luck. When we were planning our honeymoon, we knew that Sydney and Cairns were musts, but we had to decide between Melbourne and the Outback. We figured that Melbourne was just another city, and that it was silly to go to Australia without at least getting a taste of the Outback. Alice Springs and Uluru were added to our itinerary.
The flight from Sydney to Alice Springs is about three hours long. We looked out the window, and all we could see were miles of red emptiness. Occasionally there were dry lake beds and clusters of shrubby vegetation, but for the most part it looked very inhospitable. The deserts of Australia have claimed many an explorer.
We were quite underwhelmed by our few hours in Alice Springs. It quaint downtown area was extremely small and quiet. We wandered through outdoor malls filled with souvenir shops and familiar American icons like KMart and Baskin Robbins. Being famous for being a very remote location has only increased the number of tourists and the amount of development. We went to a grocery store to load up on snacks because you can never be too prepared in the Outback. Alice Springs was also where we first came into contact with Aboriginal people. Bryson described the downtown area thusly (and we found this to be accurate): "The people on the street were overwhelmingly white Australians, but there were Aborigines about, too--not great numbers of them, but always there, on the edge of frame, unobtrusive, nearly always silent, peripheral. The white people never loked at the Aborigines, and the Aborigines never looked at the white people. The two races seemed to inhabit separate but parallel universes. I felt as if I was the only person who could see both groups at once. It was very strange."
... Alice Springs is famous for several attractions, but historically it is important because it is the home of one of the telegraph repeater stations that run between Darwin in the north and Adelaide in the south. Its purpose was to retransmit signals as they made their way across Australia - which meant that someone had to listen for incoming messages and re-tap them into another telegraph transmitter. From Darwin, the telegraph line was run to Java, connecting Australia to the rest of the civilized world. Before the advent of the telegraph, news from the north (and the rest of the world) could take 6-8 months to arrive. Several unsuccessful expeditions to find a route from the south to north were sent out before John McDougall Stuart finally succeeded in 1862. There was actually a pony-express-style component to the initial telegraph line that was built to cover an unfinished section between the north and south portions of the line.
The station itself was like a ranch and housed some interesting exhibits; some rooms contained their original furniture. At one time, the station was also used as a camp for mixed Aboriginal-Caucasian children, who were taken from their Aboriginal families for the purpose of assimilation into Caucasian society. We received a live demonstration of Morse Code from a friendly older man who expertly tapped out "Jennifer Alice Springs." Jen was reminded of a time back in the second grade when, during show and tell, one of her classmates proudly declared that his great-great-great-grandfather had invented the Morse Code. The group of 7-year olds, not knowing what this was, were unimpressed. The thick stone walls did an admirable job of keeping it cool. Outside we spotted a wallaby.
Alice Springs is also home to two other "innovations" that address the great emptiness of Australia. The first is the School of Air, an actual school where teachers and their students communicate remotely for their lessons. Originally most of the communication was over the radio; the Internet (including streaming video and audio) has greatly improved things. Homework assignments are sent to and fro by mail. Teachers visit their students once a year or so, and all of the students assemble for a week so that they can get to know one another and experience face-to-face interaction with their peers. By middle-school age, the children are required to attend a normal, land-based school.
The Royal Flying Doctor Service also has a station in Alice Springs. It brings doctors to patients and patients to large cities for advanced diagnoses and treatments. They fly to remote regions of the country, sometimes landing on unpaved airstrips to see their patients. The cool thing about both places is that they have set up their offices in such a way that visitors can observe lessons as they are being given or a RFDS operator scheduling planes, pilots, doctors, and nurses. ...
We went to the Desert Park on Bill Bryson's recommendation. It turned out to be a very educational outing. The park is set up in three main areas, each representing a different desert environment. We picked up audioguides and walked from post to post. The nocturnal house had a lot of animals hopping around in dim light. While many animals can dig into the desert sand to cool down (several feet down will get you to a constant seventy degrees or so), plants are not so lucky. They've come up with a number of ways to save water and reduce exposure to the sun.
We watched a live bird show that included a battle (an unplanned one, at that) between the Park's resident wedge-tailed hawk and a local wild wedge-tailed hawk. They dive claws-first to attack, but the bird that is being attacked will flip upside down momentarily to protect itself with its claws. It's an amazing sight to see. We saw a few more of these lining the road from Alice Springs to Uluru. They also had a trained black kite, a very beautiful bird recognizable by the V-shaped indentation of its tail. ... We then visited the Reptile House. This place screamed "Tourist Trap!" to us. We walked into a display area through the side door, and outdoor holding pens held various types of lizards. A large crocodile was asleep at the bottom of a small pond. Inside they had more reptiles, including some of Australia's most poisonous snakes - which, incidentally, makes them some of the most poisonous snakes in the world. After seeing reptiles at the Desert Park that morning and at the Taronga Zoo a few days before, Wing wasn't impressed. Jen was squeamish. But then everything changed - 15 chairs were laid out in a half circle and one of the guides began talking about some of the wildlife. Like all of our tour guides, he was knowledgeable, witty, and extremely easy-going and likeable. He brought out several animals for us:
The sleepy lizard, one of the world's most slowest moving animals. Ok, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it certainly didn't try to move while we were there. Its skin is thick and scaly, and to protect itself it curves its body around to bring its head near its tail. Because of the way its legs have evolved (to face backwards rather than forwards), an attacking bird may not be able to tell which end is the head - which means that it may mistakenly try to bite the tail, leaving the head unharmed. It's also Jen's favorite lizard in the world. The blue-tongued skink, with a beautiful blue tongue. The guide brought this little guy around and let him lick everyone's nose (except Jen's; she wimped out). Like many reptiles, it uses its tongue to smell.
Some spikey lizard, whose scary-looking spikes are actually a bluff - they bend like rubber. This one ate a yummy cockroach (grown at a cockroach farm) while several of the onlookers gasped in disgust. Wing thought it was pretty cool.
The wooma python, a poisonous snake-eater, which makes it okay in our book. It will actually crawl into a tunnel with a poisonous snake, wait for the snake to start heading out before inflating itself in the tunnel. Its scales feel smooth if you rub it from head to tail, but rough if you rub it in the opposite direction - this gives it some traction to prevent the other snake from sliding by. This is Jen's favorite snake. One great thing that we learned from the reptile house is that Australian snakes, while extremely venomous, have extremely small fangs. He showed us some tiny fangs that were about half a centimeter long, if not shorter. In constrast, he had fangs from another poisonous snake from Africa, and they were two inches long. And those were baby snake fangs. What this means for people wandering the bush is that any layer of clothing covering the legs and feet will prevent snakebites because the fangs are too small and weak to pierce through. Some additional tips:
The reptile house, besides being a pretty cool tourist attraction, ended up allaying many of Wing's fears about getting killed by wild animals. (The weeks after we decided on a honeymoon destination, Wing inundated Jen with website links to various poisonous animals, all of whom were native to Australia.) ...
The sunsets at Alice Springs were quite a sight to behold. The clear sky and whispy clouds are very beautiful as they change colors. On our last evening, we watched the sunset from the Anzac Memorial, built to honor Australian and New Zealand soldiers who fought in World War I. Key trivia fact: The memorial states that WWI ended in 1919 instead of 1918. |