 An intrepid Steve Dow ventures into the outback and finds old assumptions about Alice Springs fall away.
Alice Springs is a choice weekend destination for discerning gay travellers. What, you say? The middle of the desert, with a permanent population of just 23,892, where discarded beer stubbies line the outback roads and wedge-tailed eagles pick at bloody big red kangaroo carcasses? Am I out of my mind?
Not at all. As the bespectacled, smiling Chris Collins of Alice Springs Helicopters flies me over the rocky mountains of the West MacDonnell Ranges at sunset in a black Bell 47 – no doors means you can wave yoo-hoo to the secretive US Pine Gap defence facility below – old assumptions about Alice fall away.
The landscape is beautifully rugged, filled with mulgas and spinifex in red earth and ghost gums poking out of quartzite stone. There’s not been a decent rain for more than a year, but plenty of water pumped underground from the sea up north via the Great Artesian Basin. Seems a bit cruel for water-restricted Sydney and Melbourne.
There’s no gay club, but every Friday from 5.30pm locals and out-of-towners meet informally poolside over drinks at the Voyages Alice Springs resort. I settle in with a glass of wine and talk to two women about delicate cultural matters; they’re out-of-town nurses here to work with the Federal Government’s Aboriginal communities intervention.
A gay and lesbian community barbeque is held at the Old Telegraph Station from 4pm on the second Sunday of the month, while the Lane Restaurant, a tapas bar in Todd Mall, has regular gay and lesbian rages. The next one, X-ES, is on Saturday July 12. Check www.gayasp.com.
Former Sydneysider Phil Walcott fell for Alice Springs straight away when he arrived in 1993. “It felt like the same sense of community I remember from the Imperial Hotel when I lived in Erskineville,” he says. He met ex-Melburnian Glenn Ponchard at a party in Alice on new year’s eve 2001, and they had their first date seven months later at the famous Camel Cup at Blatherskite Park (which this year is held on July 12). Today, the couple run the gay bed and breakfast Rainbow Connections, a comfortable and welcoming place to stay.
If you want to see maximum wild and cultural life in minimum time, the Alice Springs Desert Park is worth a visit, particularly if you fancy watching a wedge-tailed eagle crack open an egg. Here, Aboriginal cultural interpreter Leroy Lester demonstrates spears.
Lester picks one up to show the crowd – “you twist it like you’re playing tennis, then let it go” – and his spear soars. Spears are still used under traditional law, part of the responsibilities a man attains when he marries and has children. “Like in America, every second house got a revolver – same thing,” says Lester.
Tourism NT takes me to Thakeperte, an outstation north-west of town, and I meet Steven McCormack, a 57-year-old western Arrernte man, and his wife Gloria, 53, the traditional Aboriginal owners. McCormack, who was born on this land and was a stockman like his father and grandfather, was thrown off the land in the early 1970s because the pastoralists did not want Aboriginal people to maintain a continuous claim. The McCormacks fought and won their right to return two decades later.
We go digging for honey ants with the McCormacks, their six-year-old granddaughter, and mongrel dogs T-Bone and Dusty. Gloria does most of the back work with shovels and an iron bar, while Steven sits on a chair pointing at digging spots. “Watch out, they bite!” he jokes. We each get to eat a honey ant’s rear sack. Sweet. You throw the actual ant away, incidentally.
Tourism NT is developing Thakeperte as a low-key tourist destination. All enquiries to indigenous development officer Andy Hood on
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or 08 8951 8507.
If you are keen to buy Aboriginal art, hire a four-wheel drive like I did and travel 290 kilometres north-west on the Tanami Road to the reputable Warlukurlangu Artists Centre at Yuendumu (www.warlu.com), where the art is sold at reasonable prices, half going back to the artist.
Travelling to a centre like this is not only a good way to guard against dodgy carpetbaggers who rip off Aboriginal artists by underpaying them, it’s an incredible eye-opener into the way indigenous people live, and you’ll see artists painting. Best of all, Yuendumu welcomes visitors. Just make sure you hire a rugged car for the rugged road.
Keep the four-wheel drive for a second day, and tour the West MacDonnell Ranges. Best spots: the gaping Standley Chasm, the Ochre Pits that provide ceremonial paint for Aborigines, and Glen Helen Gorge, a perfect spot for kicking back with a late afternoon wine and watching the light fade.
Steve Dow travelled to Alice Springs as a guest of Tourism NT.
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