Getting to know Alice
There’s a lot to be learned from the town in the red heart of Australia, writes Thomas Bywater
Todd and Alice could be characters in an Outback epic. Deep in the red centre of Australia’s Northern Territory, Alice Springs is the tough matriarch of the desert. Rough around the edges but full of character to those who take time to get to know her.
Todd, meanwhile, is the Territory’s vast vagrant river. He’s rarely in town; but when he is he’s hard to miss. Roads become streams and everything grinds to a halt.
But mostly the riverbed lies fallow.
It’s a trench roughly two rugby pitches wide cutting the town in half, with silvery river gums growing through its pink, scrubby sand. The bridges that cross it seem out of place in dry season. Expectant white sticks painted with depth gauges mark the course and wait for Todd’s return.
Arriving from a wet Auckland winter, it’s hard to understand the Territory; a place that counts rainy seasons for fear they’ll miss one. There have been years without.
On the high street, I see a saloon with what looks like Mad Max’s ride parked outside and swing doors from which I half expect Mick Dundee and a half-dozen other Outback cliches to roll out. Just across the road a unicorn leaps from a fairground carousel at the front of a beer garden called Monte’s.
This town called Alice plays to many stereotypes and resists them all.
It’s not just foreign visitors, Australians also struggle to get their heads around Alice. Drawn by Uluru, Kings Canyon and the vast Outback, it’s on the bucket list for most coast-dwelling Aussies — but the truth is few have ever visited. Those who do tend to have delayed this final adventure until late in their lives. Arriving in dry heat they struggle to recognise it as their own land.
For the local Arrernte people, they’d agree it is another country.
The arid landscape has not made things easy, but it has meant that Arrernte country has been relatively untouched compared to more habitable parts of Australia. There’s a culture and knowledge connected to the land here that has thrived. Alice Springs’ cafes and galleries are full of this influence and today Aboriginal businesses are blossoming.
At Kungkas Can Cook, Rayleen Brown has overseen something of a renaissance in bushcraft and cookery. (facebook.com/kungkascancook)
Not the patronising, masculine survivalism preached by comfortable BBC presenters in shorts; this is the real wisdom of how to survive in Australia’s red desert — and the traditional custodians of this knowledge have always been women.
The Kungkas, as they are known in Arrernte, not only know how to survive but also to produce amazing food from scrubland.
Brown’s restaurant contains flavours and spices you’d not find in another kitchen on the planet. Quandong, saltbush, wattleseed, river mint and lemon myrtle are just a few of the ingredients harvested in Northern Territory.They come together to create a uniquely Australian flavour that is on the verge of breaking into the mainstream. Passengers fortunate enough to visit the inside of a Qantas lounge might recognise the Kungkas’ work in the Cutlass Gin, blended with Northern Territory bush tomatoes.
What makes this achievement even more remarkable is that the Kungkas harvest their bush tucker by hand. The teams of local women harvesting wattleseed haven’t changed much in hundreds of years of passed-on knowledge. It is hugely labour intensive.
Though the younger members are a little more open to the idea of a threshing machine to lighten the load, the older generation stands by the manual traditions that root them to the land.
This reluctance to change is not Luddism. There’s a whole load of identity, culture and lessons about the land tied up in these methods. Songs and stories are attached to every step and ingredient from the harvest. Moving away from the traditional Arrernte ways would not necessarily be progress.
Someone who understands this dilemma is another Arrernte woman and business owner, Deanella Mack. Although from an Arrernte family, she was brought up not speaking a word of the local dialect. It’s something she’s had to consciously learn. Cultural Connections (facebook.com/culturalconnectionsnt) is run out of Stanley Chasm — known to the Arrernte as Angkerle Atwatye — a giant, red quartzite fissure in the West MacDonnell Ranges.
Mack has had one foot in both Arrernte and European-Australian culture. “Think of me as a bridge,” she says. She has made a way for visitors to navigate the pitfalls and potentials of getting to know the indigenous culture of the Territory.
After a conversation with Mack you’ll see why Arrernte knowledge is something which needs to be earned and valued. As more visitors arrive in Alice, heading out into the MacDonnell ranges or on the road to Uluru, it can only be a good thing. It’s part of filling in the mysterious red patch in the middle of Australia.
Getting to know the town and her surroundings is a way to a fuller, richer picture of the country.