3 November 2011 - G’Day Mate Tourist Park, Alice Springs, Northern Territory

As the final full day here in Alice Springs draws to a close, the sun is shining and we are enjoying the sound of Yulia as an exercise to check my CD copying skills. Since returning from New Zealand we have been unable to lay our hands on the iPod which houses our music library, or at least those we took the time to record before packing up our household. We must have taken it back to New Zealand with us after all, even though I do recall thinking that I would not. Perhaps the pack of iPod and accessories will turn up in the least expected place, or alternatively we will rediscover it when we next make use of our motorhome. So in the meantime we have purchased a pile of blank CDs and are laboriously transferring our most favourite albums. Note this is not pirating because all of these albums were legitimately paid for and are stored in boxes in our house!

This morning was spent dealing with laundry and provisioning the van for departure from civilisation once more. Chris also had his haircut at a unisex hairdresser since it appears that there is no barber in Alice. There is obviously a business opportunity here in the town for such a person.

After lunch we set off for the Araluen Cultural Precinct which incorporates a Craft Centre, the Central Australian Aviation Museum and a theatre where Arthouse films are shown and live performances are held. It was after 2 pm by the time we arrived and so we had time only to visit the Art Gallery and the Museum of Central Australia, also situated on the premises.

The art gallery is home to the Albert Namatjira Gallery which displays a rotating selection of his works along with those by his mentor, Battarbee, and the better works done by Albert’s immediate family. Alongside these works is an exhibition of dot paintings, to celebrate forty years of the Papunya movement.

Geoffry Bardon, a teacher back in the 1970s, started this art movement by encouraging aboriginals to express themselves through this medium. In those first days he scavenged for left over house paint and discarded paint brushes and the movement grew from then. Today tourists and art aficionados chase this style of work believing it to be true aboriginal art. It is not, but most of it is truly work done by aboriginals.

The museum was small but excellent. It houses a very good natural history section, with geological displays and a large section of stuffed birds, animals and other critters. So often in these treasure houses, the taxidermy looks like it was done fifty years ago or more, the moths have had a field day and the colours faded beyond recognition. Not so in the museum here in Alice Springs.

Painters were working in the middle of an exhibition about the construction of the modern Stuart Highway during the early 1940s by the armies of Australia and America.

The exhibition that caught my attention was that about the anthropologist, Ted (Theodore) Strehlow, son of the missionary of Hermannsburg. Of course Ted was born there and grew up among the Arrente people. He worked amongst them and recorded their songs, stories and so much that in time he was entrusted a collection of secret sacred artefacts and bits by the elders, which were to be destroyed on his death. He could not bring himself to do that, so left them all to his second wife and son by that marriage, who subsequently put them up for auction. Ted died in 1978, the auction took place a decade or so later and created an absolute storm. The items were withdrawn from auction and are now stored in the bowels of this museum, far away from the eyes of the public.  Ted also published words and pictures pertaining to the secret men’s rituals of the Arrente people in a German journal understanding they would never be published or available to the Australian public. Lo and behold, the article turned up in a popular Australian publication and there was hell to play. It seems that the German publisher had sold the copyright to the more local outfit, all outside Strehlow’s knowledge. He had to grovel to the locals here, apologising profusely, but his grief was so great, he expired soon after, from a heart attack.

The curator came by advising that the museum was closing however we were welcome to return the tomorrow or the next day, but we will be elsewhere, far from this interesting place.

On return to the camp, we took our cups of coffee over to Peter and Sheila’s Lotus verandah and swapped notes about our travels over the past few days. We gave them our unexpired Cultural Centre tickets and quizzed them about the way ahead of us.

We have covered some incredible mileages lately, recorded here:

•  Since we set off at the end of January 2011, we have travelled 19,279 kilometres.
•  Since we left Cairns on 5 October, we have travelled 3,008 kilometres to Alice Springs.
•  Since we have been in Alice Springs, we have travelled a further 1,071 kilometres.

We have some big mileages ahead as we head south toward the border, detouring the 450 kilometres to Uluru / Ayres Rock and a further few hundred or so to King’s Canyon . I always thought this was just down the road from Alice Springs, but then perhaps in outback speak, this is so after all.