Slip, Slop, Slap!

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  Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia
Tuesday, October 18, 2011

32ºC in the shade. Well, I'm not complaining about the cold any more, that’s for sure. Some of you might think I’m suffering badly, especially after Bangkok, but truth be told, it’s a dry heat and that really makes a difference. Of course, I still sweat when walking, but standing still in the sun isn’t particularly uncomfortable. In case you’ve forgotten, in Bangkok I was sweating profusely in the rain.


Alice Springs. It has a bad reputation and it’s time to see if it’s deserved. First of all, despite being a tourist stopover, mainly for Uluru (a.k.a. Ayer’s Rock), it’s a tiny town. I stress 'town’ because apparently the population of Australia is so small that a population centre is considered to be a city if it has 30,000 inhabitants. I can’t quite see that myself, as a city size wouldn’t even fill a stand in the MCG, but what do I know?

I’ve been here for 2 days (24 hours, actually) and there hasn’t been a cloud in the sky. It did rain 2 months ago, but that was about it. There’s a river that goes through the town called Todd River, but like Fink River, I’m struggling to find the river. There is not a drop of water in the river bed – it’s just sand. In fact there are gum trees that are growing in the middle of where the river should be. First impressions; I like the heat, but it is clearly a harsh environment.

Given its reputation, I expected the people of Alice Springs to be equally harsh. Not so. I was walking along the main street, when a biker stopped me commenting on the weather. I’d heard a lot about biker gangs in Melbourne and I’ve seen Sons of Anarchy, so naturally I was wary of this suspicious individual. However, he turned out to be a solid (like my Aussie slang?) guy. When I told him I’d just arrived in town, he full of information about where to go, what to see and, most importantly, where to go drinking! I found this to be the case with just about everyone I’ve met here – people in Alice Springs are damn friendly, at least on the surface.

Alice is full of Aboriginals. That, in itself, clearly is not a bad thing, but what is obvious is that they are Alice’s underclass. Unemployment seems to be a big issue amongst them, though to hear the Australians tell it, and I don’t doubt their veracity, the Aboriginals don’t actually want to work – at least not in the classic sense of employment. It would seem that there is a major culture clash between the ‘European’ Australians and the Aboriginals. The Europeans are intent on imposing their values on the Aboriginals who don’t actually want to accept them, which creates conflict on both sides. The Aboriginals in Alice, and probably in towns like it, appear to be caught in no man’s land. They no longer live off the land, instead they live off government hand outs. Education doesn’t seem to be high amongst them, which is another disadvantage. Obviously these are just impressions as I haven’t spoken to any, but when you see the streets are full of them in the middle of the day (when all the white people are working), badly dressed, some of them begging, these are the conclusions you’ll probably draw.

Back to the less serious stuff. I bought my first tube of sunscreen today. I have never used sunscreen before, but skin cancer is a real problem here. In fact, when I mentioned that I was on my way to get some to the biker guy, he then confided that he’d had a lot of surgery because he’d contracted skin cancer due to the fact that as a youth he used to ride his bike without any protection. I was also advised to buy a hat, which I have done. Now I can participate in the great Aussie slogan. Slip, Slop, Slap! Slip on a shirt, Slop on some sunscreen and Slap on a hat!

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