Hub into the Australian Outback
Alice Springs is the only major city close to the geographical centre of Australia. The next largest city is more than 1,300 kilometres away (Adelaide or Darwin). It is located in the Northern Territory and has about 24,000 inhabitants. It offers cave-like gorges, boundless desert landscapes and remote Aboriginal communities and is the starting point for excursions to the Outback or "Red Centre", the characteristic semi-desert with red sand and an area of about 1,000,000 km². The large plain is only sparsely overgrown with Triodia. It is a hub for sightseeing and hiking in the region, such as Uluru (Ayers Rock) or Kata Tjuta (The Olgas).
Super quiet hostel (but not at night)
After a 12 hour drive from Coober Pedy I reached Alice Springs, in the middle of the Australian nowhere. I had booked a bed in the Alice's Secret Travellers Inn, a hostel with terrific reviews in the internet. The best things about it was the garden with beautiful decorations, graphics, sculptures and light installations. The hostel was filled with Germans and nobody talked much with each other. In the kitchen there was total silence, only in the toilet they curiously played music. In my room there were two stupid Germans who went in and out all night to roll joints and smoke. As a matter of fact, a few weeks later I had to share a room with these 2 idiots again in a city 2000 kilometers away. Later I changed to the Jump Inn Alice Budget, because it was cheaper and I liked the atmosphere there better. The people working there were much nicer and they even had a restaurant included with cool draft beers.
Many drunken Aborigines
Alice Springs is a small town and counts one of the highest percentage of Australian aborigines. These people don't really know what to do with the time they used to spend preparing food or hunting and the money the Australian government gives them. Thus, you often come across completely drunk Australian Aborigines who scream loudly, smell, beg for cigarettes and sleep out their intoxication in the park. On the bus trip before, one of them was talking loudly almost the whole time with his sister who was sitting several rows further ahead.
Already with their phenotype Aborigines appear to be alien in today's Australian society. With their broad and wrinkled faces, compact bodies, flat and fat nose, bulging lips and frizzy black hair, they look very similar to the earlier prehistoric humans. Germans in my room even referred to the Aborigines as "monkeys". Although the Australian government accounts for much of the misery of the Aboriginal people, the Aborigines are for me the most depraved native people that I met (perhaps on a par with the gypsies in Eastern Europe).
Walking to the view point
To get a good view of the city, you should take a short walk to Anzac Hill. The city itself doesn't offer much, it looks a bit stuck in time like a town from the 1990s. After 4 p.m. the city center is pretty much deserted and when darkness falls you should be careful. The city is considered to be one of the more dangerous in the country (because of drunken Aborigines). From Alice Springs I started my 3-day tour to Ayers Rock, the holy hill of the Aborignees (about which I write in another article).
Eye to eye with the thorny devil
After my return from the tour I met the Surinamese Fangelle. We did a short hike to the Alice Springs Telegraph Station Historical Reserve, a lot of families go there for a BBQ and a relax. We walked along the completely dried up river. The Outback is plagued by an extreme drought, temperatures of over 40 degrees in summer are normal. As everywhere in the outback, many small flies are terribly annoying. They followed us all the time and only retreated when it got colder towards evening. Over and over again they tried to fly into your eyes. Especially my black backpack seemed to attract them extremely.
In the afternoon I visited the reptile center of the city and saw for the first time a thorny devil in flesh and blood. They really stared at me in a devilish way. They are masters in surviving in dry conditions, so they are ideally suited for the Australian outback. Included in the ticket is a short show of some reptiles like lizards, which you are even allowed to take in your hand. On the way back I saw a huge flock of birds, which had spread over the telephone and power cables.
