OZtralia.tv Blog

Travel Slowly In Australia

By: Phoenix Arrien

I believe in travelling slow. I do. I do.

Now get out of my way I‘m running late!

Just kidding!

Have you heard about the Slow Travel movement? It is a trend that is growing and I believe it is a great thing. Too many people rush into a destination, run around for a day, and then rush to the next place.

What do they see? What have they learnt about the place? What have they absorbed? How about relaxing and letting the essence of a culture or landscape or people seep into your pores?

Not interested? Okay, the plane leaves in five minutes, better run! Interested? Then here are a few suggestions:

Go to a destination via ground transport. Australia has a great network of city and regional town buses, trams and trains. Long distance coaches and trains will show you the amazing diversity of landscapes on this continent.

Take longer lunches

Sleep in longer

Sit and think

Sit and don’t think

Walk or cycle. See kangaroos and emus bounce and strut, smile as you pass sleepy towns and wave to drovers grazing their cattle on the Long Paddock (the side of the road).

Cities are the hardest in which to slow down. Their very nature is to buzz and buzz, faster and faster until we all fall down.

However, someone has done some homework and two books are out on going slow in Melbourne and Sydney.

The PR states that: “Slow celebrates all that’s local, traditional, handmade and conscious. It arouses the senses and is about quality over quantity, pleasure over pressure and mindfulness over mindlessness. ”

I like being aroused just like anyone else, so if you want to join me, check out the website www.slowguides.com

Returning From The Australian Outback

By: Phoenix Arrien

I am back in Alice and checking out other attractions including the Alice Springs Desert Park for close-ups with ghost bats, ostriches and big-eared bilbies; the spectacular cracks, holes, cliffs and desert plants of Kings Canyon, Stanley Chasm and Finke Gorge National Park.

Alice is not without its festivals. If you are here in June, don a beanie for the ‘Beanie Festival’ celebrating everything for the head that is woollen and beyond. Get into some high octane, low brain, insane on the desert plain (also in June) for the Tattersall’s Finke Desert Race where bikes, cars and buggies hurtle from the town of Finke to Alice. Then there is the Alice Springs Show in July or cheer Miss Camel on her Cup during the Voyages Lions Camel Cup also in July.

On normal days though, at the end of each fun-filled, sun-baked, dust-ridden attendance at attractions, I seem to end up, like everyone else, at Todd Mall located in the centre of town. It is a place to browse for goodies like books and camping equipment while being stalked by mangy camp dogs. Yup ya gotta be an animal lover out here.

Visit the Red Centre and get a new appreciation of a unique part of Australia.

A Visit To Alice Springs, Australia

By: Phoenix Arrien

Back on the hop-on-hop-off bus around Alice Springs.

First up is ANZAC Hill for great views of the township. The Anzac Hill lookout shows how Alice Springs kinda’ snuggles into a bit of a valley bordered by the MacDonnell Ranges. It looked relaxed and sleepy as it spreads out among green trees and bakes in the sun.

Each stop sees me wandering into unique places like the Royal Flying Doctor Service and School of the Air, both with enormous distances for their personnel to cover: oh, about the size of Britain.

The Docs look after the scattered population in need of medical attention, the School makes sure the local (read - within several thousand kilometres or so) kids didn’t have any excuse not to do their schoolwork, even though they are at home rather than in a classroom. The doctors and nurses buzz around in small planes that land in paddocks about the size of London, while the teachers sit in the best spot they can: thousands of kilometres away from their students and use radio and internet to scold Johnny into doing his 2 X table.

The Alice Springs Reptile Centre. Here you get to learn about wildlife, have a python wrap itself around your neck and learn how to kiss a lizard. The Reptile Centre has goannas, frill- necked lizards, thorny devils (met a few of those in my travels) and some of this country’s (and the world’s) seventeen most venomous snakes (met even more of these travelling the world too).

I become a kulcha vulture at the Cultural Precinct. To wander around here takes a few hours if you really want to check out desert life. There are eight buildings to explore as well as seven Aboriginal sacred sites and two ‘women dreaming tracks’. There is also desert art in the art galleries, bones in the Museum of Central Australia and aboriginal artefacts, found in the 1930’s, at the Strehlow Research Centre.

You can get into the insides of a giant caterpillar - the ‘dreaming animal’ of the local aboriginal tribe, via their metal outdoor sculpture. The Central Australian Aviation Museum has early planes including a restored DC3 dominating the hangar and other bits and pieces that once flew the sunny skies. More than a few planes crashed as they propelled across the desert skies during the first half of the last century, certainly a risky business being a desert pilot.

The Road Transport museum contains the Old Ghan train still perched on its railway tracks and ready to roll out and stream across the deserts of Central and Southern Australia. It used to go from Adelaide on the south coast to Alice, but the route often became flooded, so a new track was laid and a modern train now zooms along it in style, stopping in Alice but then going further north to Darwin on the north coast. So in fact you can travel across Australia in 48 hours and see much of the desert along the way.

Inbetween touring with the Wanderer, I munch on ‘roo and emu at the Overlander Steakhouse, heave around on camels on the dry Todd Riverbed and zip around town on the back of a Harley Davidson. Outsides of Alice the attractions include Kings Canyon, Palm Valley and tomorrow, my friends, I visit one of the great icons of Australia.

I am making my first pilgrimage out to Uluru, a red rock of mystery and legend.

The Australian Outback’s Alice Springs

By: Phonix Arrien

So anyway, having survived crocodiles in the north of Australia, then watched the Logies on TV in a pub in a tiny speck of a town called Humpty Doo (seriously), I turned south towards the centre of this vast continent.

There is a town sitting in the very centre of Australia and to visit is to appreciate the resilience and ability of people, animals and plants to adapt to harsh, desert conditions. This town is called Alice Springs - even though the woman it was named after never visited the place and there is no springs anywhere nearby.

You can get to Alice by coach - takes a long time from anywhere; travel on the train, a great trip on the Ghan, named after the Afghans who supplied the great stations with supplies before the railway was built; or you can fly. Or of course you can drive.

Once there the best ways to see the sights is on a ‘get-on-get-off’ bus and my first stop is theTelegraph Station, built in 1872 as a relay for the single telegraph wire that crossed the continent from Adelaide to Darwin. The restored building contains rustic gizmos and gadgets: the ancestors of wireless internet, blackberries and strawberry coloured mobiles.

The town is actually three kilometres south of the Telegraph Station which is next to a waterhole (though hardly a ‘spring’). Alice used to be called Stuart but in 1933 was officially named the more popular title everyone had been calling it anyway: Alice Springs.

Time to tuck into a motel for the night, yawn. More tomorrow.