Alice Springs

We arrived in time to find our hotel, have a bit of a walk, eat dinner and hit the sack so we would be ready for our full day in Alice Springs. The land here is beautiful, red, dry and reminds me a bit of the west. Since it’s winter here, the temps are pleasant with a nice breeze blowing. Todd River is a dry bed right now but we were told water is often 6 ft deep during wet season. I imagine it doesn’t last long though!

We started our day early with a 5:30 wake-up call. Our transport arrived about an hour later to take us to meet our guide for our Aboriginal Dreamtime and Bushtucker Tour. We learned about the past and present culture of the Aboriginal people. Sounds as if there were only about 40,000 people in Australia before the white explorers arrived. Now consider the size of this continent and imagine only 40,000 people in a land about the size of the US. There were hundreds of tribes each with their own language, customs and foods.

Dreamtime is the story of the Earth. First there was the BEGINNING with nothing on the surface of the earth. All the spirits lived below. During CREATION, the spirits came up to the surface of the Earth and wherever they walked they left their prints on the land, The prints created the land, water, mountains, etc. LEGACY is the continuation of all that was created. Stories were developed to share this Dreamtime and the stories were put to song. The songs continue to the present.

We met some Aboriginal people and were able to chat with them and purchase their paintings. I have been waiting for this my whole trip and finally purchased two of their “dot” paintings. The ladies were happy to have their pictures taken with their paintings but we did learn that this is not typical. When an Aboriginal person dies, their family and friends do not speak of them and do not want to have photos of them. They believe that if they speak of the dead person, he/she will hear them and be sad they are unable to return to be with their friends and family.

Elizabeth KataKariiuja’s Bush Banana Dreaming, very quietly talked about her family members who are artists. One is a very popular landscape artist here in Australia. She explained that the women typically do paintings about gathering. Here in the bush, they gather bananas, tomatoes, potatoes and seeds. The men are the hunters. She also explained that she now considers me her friend and someone who will share the stories with other white people.



Audrey Nungarrai and her husband showed me the pictures of all the things they gather and the color of each. They were very quiet and a bit shy but we did learn that their grandson is on the Melbourne Football team. They were very proud of that and rightly so! Football here is not the same as American football and I can not ever begin to explain it. Nonetheless, we did watch the game later in the day in the hopes of seeing their grandson. Evidently he did not play today and I understand he is new to the team and has only just started with them this season. Audrey’s painting is Wallaby Dreaming East of Mount Doreen. She explained that it is the story of the men hunting the wallabies.



Talking about hunting, we learned about boomerangs and actually got to try them out. Josh was almost an expert and , well, I tried it! Nuff said!!! The boomerangs they use here are not the returning ones. The shape is a bit different and you do have to retrieve it along with the animal!


The bush tucker was interesting. We started with Billy tea (hot tea) and damper (bread) both cooked over the open fire. Then we moved to another area and tried whattle seeds, bush tomatoes and witchetty grub. My new friend Elizabeth assured me that the cooked grub tasted like eggs and was also used as medicine for colds and asthma. I could not try the live grub but I did try a teeny, tiny piece of the cooked grub and, by gosh, it did taste like egg! It did NOT seem to make me feel any better by eating it though.


After our tour, we headed downtown and spent several hours walking around, enjoying the shops and having lunch at an English pub. We lazed around the pool until late afternoon before getting our bags ready for our next few days at Uluru.