Alice Springs, Northern Territory
Touristy things around Alice Springs: the great Central Australia Museum, which I thought was fab (meteors! fossils!) and Chris hated, and the Alice Springs Desert Park, which kinda sucked.
Also, we visited Panorama Guth, an odd gallery of one man's paintings featuring Central Australian landscapes and naked black chicks. I kid you not.
Woke up. Stopped by post office. Digital camera not in yet; it takes about three days to arrive from Brisbane as parcels travel by road, not air. Waaaa!
Went to the "Alice Springs Cultural Precinct" and the Central Australia Museum. Now, some museums are a bit long-winded, and like to start with a 'In the beginning, there was the Big Bang...', and that's how this museum started out. Groan, I thought, when I see museums like this, I think that the museum needs better editors. But no, it turned out to have a wonderful introduction of the many meteor craters in Central Australia, as well as actual meteorites and tektites. Some meteorites were polished, showing how their iron-nickel centers have crystallized into hexagonal patterns. And it made a great segway into the geology of the area, as most of the meteor craters are 200 million years old, with some approaching 2 billion years. The landscape hasn't changed much since then around here.
There were also extensive collections of all Central Australian animals: birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, all nicely displayed, as well as a bit on how they came to be here. I was surprised to find that the middle of Australia has only recently become a desert, so there hasn't been enough time to develop specific families of plants or animals--unlike arid regions in the Americas or Africa. Instead, you get some adapted plants and animals from other parts of Australia that have migrated to the center and gone through moderate changes. I thought the museum was well put together, and quite up to date (it's about four years old.) It's much more a natural history museum than anything, and it really did explain how to view the country around here. . Chris, though, found it boring, calling it just a collection of rocks and stuffed animals. Sigh.
We also read about the artifacts in the Stenlow collection, a huge collection of Aboriginal artifacts. All of it is secured in a vault behind the museum, available to researchers only. I somewhat gathered that it used to be displayed in public (the museum building is ten years old, but the museum is only four... go figure.) I just thought it was another case of how inaccessible much of Aboriginal culture is. And it's meant to be that way--even if you really want to understand, they do not want you to--you are not initiated, you may be the wrong gender. Earnest backpackers may try to connect to the Aborigines by purchasing a $99 didgeridoo on the Todd Street Mall, but they're just showing their naïveté.
Then we tried to get lunch--but the Golden Inn Chinese restaurant wasn't open (like much of Alice Springs.) With the number of half-open places in town, I wonder if tourism in Alice Springs has declined a lot or what. Chris decided to go to the cafe at the Desert Park, so we drove out there... paid our $18 each... and found out that was closed too. Grrr.
So we walked around. The Desert Park had good landscaping with all native plants... and lots of birds. Lots and lots of birds. And a nocturnal house. And kangaroos and emus. And that was it. It was all very superficial; the signs mainly pointed out things like "The bilby goes out at night". I wanted to know more... but after the Desert Park, I got the impression that the central Australian deserts just aren't all that interesting. Do the birds migrate? What's it like after a good soaking? What species (and there a good dozen mammals) have gone extinct in the past thirty years? How do feral animals compete with native ones? I didn't get any of these answered. I was disappointed.
Lastly, we went to Panorama Guth. A local artist, Henk Guth, has painted lots of oil paintings of gum trees in the desert. Lots and lots. The most interesting room, though, was what I called the "Tit Room": lots of paintings with women exposing their breasts. Chris pointed out the most fabulous painting, entitled "Lady of Jamaica". It was certainly painted in the 1970's, a naked black women sitting down with a huge Afro. It was truly great.
Afterwards, we headed back to the room and relaxed.
We were also greatly amused that Imparja, the Aboriginal owned TV channel, shows the Simpsons at 5:00pm... and that Bart Simpson was writing "Indian burns are not part of our cultural heritage" on the blackboard. Hee!
Weird Wildlife Sighting
A curious parrot in the bushes at the Desert Park. Black head, yellow ring neck, green ring, yellow chest. Very distinctive.