It was the year 2000. In January, our small twin-engined plane had whirred into the sky on a sultry summer morning from steamy Darwin towards mystical Alice Springs. Dawn broke out in an array of strange iridescence so native to the southern skies and we gently rolled into a quaint little airstrip seemingly in the middle of no-where! Precisely…. Alice Springs!
This oasis in the Great Australian Desert sprung up in the 1870’s around a permanent waterhole chosen as a base while constructing overland Telegraph lines across Australia. Named after Alice Todd, wife of the then construction manager of this project, Alice Springs soon attracted tourists and migrants in search of a better life in the 1880’s and blossomed over decades of its present strength of 45,000.
My husband and I sauntered down the brown stoned pedestrian walk of Todd Mall, the city’s commercial hub to discover the numerous idiosyncrasies of this strange place. Shops that sold oversized bamboo trumpets called didgeridoos to boomerangs fashioned from native trees and decorated with aboriginal art. The dot and bark paintings exhibiting indigenous. folklore in symbolic form using natural earthy colors were absolutely fascinating. Boughs of willows hung down like tapestry and offered sanctuary from the blazing desert sun as they sprung up all over the walk and nestled little cafes in their shade. Cuisine from the world over was proffered at these cafes to cater to tourists – the main fraction of all visible population. The north end of Todd street brought us to Anzac Hill from where a panoramic. view of Alice Springs with botanical gardens at its fringes, the dry meandering bed of the Todd river with the MacDonald ranges in the backdrop could be savored.
We were just beginning to realize the mystique of this secluded habitation…pondering over what promise it held for us during our one year’s proposed period of stay here.
Life Is Like That! 