Good-bye Alice
Good-bye Alice Springs - and not a moment too soon. Actually I'm probably being a little unfair. If it hadn't been for this place, Charles Todd might never have been able to establish the route for the Telegraph lines that linked Adelaide on the southern coast with Darwin in the north.....come to think of it, two other places where no sane person would want to live!
To be fair to Alice, the ranchers and miners needed to have somewhere to come and get drunk and buy supplies. Today tourists come to buy things they don't need - except fly nets, which they do need - and the 'local indiginous population' come and get drunk.
As you drive through the bush you come across huge signs that say NO ALCOHOL and NO PORNOGRAPHY and in the small print give details of the federal laws which give effect to these bans. This is the government response to the inability of the Aboriginees to cope with booze and sexual excess. It probably seems a bit heavy handed to us, but apparently it's a huge problem in quite a lot of Australia. Unable to get pissed in the countryside, the locals come into town to get pissed. So you do encounter groups of them in the less salubrious corners getting over the previous night's boozing.
Sadly, I also have to report the Aboriginal is not naturally the most attractive humanoid in this part of the world. It is very likely that in a beauty contest - at least one run under European guidelines - they would actually be disqualified and to return to the alcohol bans for a second....one of the reasons most often being given for this is that so many of the men are getting beaten up.....by their wives! Well you should see some of them!! I'd run!!
Again to be fair to the locals, the European immigrants have been here for no more than 200 years. They have displaced the aboriginal tribes and driven them off the land of which they have been a part and on which they have developed a culture that is over 20,000 years old. That culture is based on the simple need to do only what is necessary to survive. After that you relax. Is it any wonder that they cannot understand or assimilate European ways? The government, to assuage its guilt for the way the Aboriginals have been treated by previous generations has a programme of 'help' at the heart of which are the inevitable financial handouts typical of every government's musguided altruism. So survival for the 'abo' is now easy...collect your money, go get pissed, no need to do anything at all to survive. Their behaviour is entirely consistent with their millenia old traditions and cultural values and we wonder why they won't work to better themselves - or theirselves as they say out here.
Talking of the things they say out here, one of the tour guides we met actually used the term 'fair dinkum' in conversation. Australians in the cities are very much as you would expect in any cosmopolitan environment. Out here in the middle of nowhere, they are all living embodiments of Paul Hogan's Crocodile Dundee character - or in many cases, Donk! They all share Croc Dundee's sense of humour, a dry sarcasm that just makes you chuckle.
To be fair to Alice, the ranchers and miners needed to have somewhere to come and get drunk and buy supplies. Today tourists come to buy things they don't need - except fly nets, which they do need - and the 'local indiginous population' come and get drunk.
As you drive through the bush you come across huge signs that say NO ALCOHOL and NO PORNOGRAPHY and in the small print give details of the federal laws which give effect to these bans. This is the government response to the inability of the Aboriginees to cope with booze and sexual excess. It probably seems a bit heavy handed to us, but apparently it's a huge problem in quite a lot of Australia. Unable to get pissed in the countryside, the locals come into town to get pissed. So you do encounter groups of them in the less salubrious corners getting over the previous night's boozing.
Sadly, I also have to report the Aboriginal is not naturally the most attractive humanoid in this part of the world. It is very likely that in a beauty contest - at least one run under European guidelines - they would actually be disqualified and to return to the alcohol bans for a second....one of the reasons most often being given for this is that so many of the men are getting beaten up.....by their wives! Well you should see some of them!! I'd run!!
Again to be fair to the locals, the European immigrants have been here for no more than 200 years. They have displaced the aboriginal tribes and driven them off the land of which they have been a part and on which they have developed a culture that is over 20,000 years old. That culture is based on the simple need to do only what is necessary to survive. After that you relax. Is it any wonder that they cannot understand or assimilate European ways? The government, to assuage its guilt for the way the Aboriginals have been treated by previous generations has a programme of 'help' at the heart of which are the inevitable financial handouts typical of every government's musguided altruism. So survival for the 'abo' is now easy...collect your money, go get pissed, no need to do anything at all to survive. Their behaviour is entirely consistent with their millenia old traditions and cultural values and we wonder why they won't work to better themselves - or theirselves as they say out here.
Talking of the things they say out here, one of the tour guides we met actually used the term 'fair dinkum' in conversation. Australians in the cities are very much as you would expect in any cosmopolitan environment. Out here in the middle of nowhere, they are all living embodiments of Paul Hogan's Crocodile Dundee character - or in many cases, Donk! They all share Croc Dundee's sense of humour, a dry sarcasm that just makes you chuckle.
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