Introducing Alice

Alice Springs is everything and nothing. It's everything that you've read it will be, and nothing like you expect!
First impressions are always dangerous, but the airport is a spic and span bush airstrip, gone modern; a brightpiece of shiny chrome and glass air-conditioned technology planted in an awful lot of red ochre emptiness. It was fresh and friendlyand, after our walk across the sunny tarmac, we were picked up quickly and efficiently by the bouncy girl from Toddy's Backpacker Resort.
"Throw your luggage in the trailer, guys, it's all open over there," she said, "I'll be along in a jiffy, no worries." So we did, and she was.
There were a few other people on the bus - a group of three backpackers, two girls and a boy, comparing travel in a mixture of Spanish and English, a pair of Asian girls and a lone, quiet middle-aged woman traveller wearing a straw hat held on by a scarf. We talked to one another a little, but mainly as acknowledgement that we were all in the same bus, and anyway, the driver was giving us snippets of local information as we rolled along.
"Not much to see on this stretch of road, guys."
"This is Heavitree Gap, guys," pointing to the break in the hills where the road ran into town, "used to be that Aboriginal law only allowed men to come into town through here; women had to walk to a gap 7 km further around. Tough for the women, eh guys!"
"That sandy track's the Todd River, guys. It's full of water, guys, but you can't see it 'cos up here Mother Nature's been kinda clever, guys, and made the rivers upside down so the river bed protects the water from the heat. Neat, eh."
This phenomenon of tour guides and drivers using the word "guys" addressed to males and females during any kind of organised delivery or instructions is ubiquitous. It's interesting, though, that once you're talking to them on a one-to-one basis, it doesn't happen any more. Must be part of the uniform, along with the beanie and the khaki cargo pants.
The lone woman traveller was dropped off at the up-market Desert Palms resort while we trundled on to Toddy's on the other side of town. It's a big, friendly concern - something like Hotel Ali in Marrakech - dorms, double rooms, family suites, plenty of open areas, and lots of help to book on tours and spend your tourist-dollar! We left our rucksacs in our neat and tidy room and set off to eplore ...The Alice.
It's not a beautiful town. Functional describes it better. Mainly single-storey buildings line wide, sealed roads that intersect at right-angles to one another. There's a tired, run down atmosphere on much of the main drag and business is obviously not good for all of the entrepreneurs who've tried to ride on the back of the town's iconic image for tourists and travellers. Vacant units are scattered throughout the shopping areas. What is impressive, though, is the setting. The town sits in a huge shallow basin, with the MacDonnell Ranges running east to west and the Stuart Highway north to south. Heavitree Gap is the only way through the MacDonnells, to the south, and it's this gap that the road uses. What our driver hadn't told us is that the gap played an important in the local Arrernte people dreaming stories a long time before the town arrived. Men's business was carried out there, and that was why the women kept away.
Here, in Alice Springs we found Aboriginal people in evidence for the first time. If you read "Down Under" by Bill Bryson, you'll find a very accurate description. Some move through the streets as though they inhabit a different space from the white Australians and the visitors. Some are drunk or intoxicated on other substances than alcohol. Sometimes battered, they congregate in groups on corners and greens, or sit and talk loudly in family groups as shoppers and sightseers flow around them.
(more later)