No Town Like Alice (OB4)
I’m locked into lockstep with seven burly locksmiths – left, right, left, right – but fast. It’s conga on speed. The quickest queue in the west. Red sand is flying. Muscles ache, as hordes of cowboys and all-leather bikies cheer us on.
Around our midriffs is a boat – a hollow canoe. Eight torsos poke above the hull as 16 synchronised legs quickstep in the sand below. It’s a boat-race, though the nearest sea is 1500kms away. The blue marker buoys are landlocked barrels and the only water hazard is a Viking with a fire extinguisher. Welcome to Alice, queen of the bizarre.
Fact is, if Offbeat was a category in the Australian Tourism Awards, then Alice Springs would win in a walkover. No other town in Terra Australis can claim such an abundance of oddity.
Stuck in the island’s heart, this mirage on the Stuart Highway does much to embody our Aussie uniqueness. As Ballykissangel is to Ireland so is Alice Springs to us. From date farms to road trains, from beanie festivals to turf-free turf clubs, this outback town evokes our breakaway spirit.
Writing Cassowary Crossing, I spent two years roaming our big brown land, looking for the fresh and the freakish, and so many roads led to Alice Springs. A river-free regatta is just one part of her surrealism. In every sense, Alice is out-there.
So when Assa Abloy – a Swedish multinational devoted to keeping the world’s doors and windows secure – invited yours truly to to run and write, I found the numskullery hard to resist. Queen Alice – here I come again.
But wait, why IS Alice such a curious specimen? Is there something in her water supply? (Alice taps an aquifer dated at some 30,000 years old – pure dinosaur piss as some citizens call it.) Is it in the air? (Anchored in the continent’s centre, locals joke that every breeze is a sea-breeze.)
Or maybe the answer lies in the name. Alice is only Australian town to undergo a sex change, switching from her original name of Stuart in 1933. Alice in fact honours Alice Todd, the postmaster’s wife, though her fabled springs are 4kms out of town. Starting to see a pattern here? Nothing goes according to script.
Mind you, before the Todds and their fancy telegraph wires came, Alice wasn’t Alice, but Ntyarlkarle Tyaneme, the Arrernte name paying homage to the landscape’s giant caterpillars.
Flying in, you can see the caterpillars clearly. Alice in fact seems to be lying in the middle of a chenille bedspread, the wriggly lines of the MacDonnell Ranges the rare interruption in a vast red mattress.
At ground level, the caterpillars loom larger. Beside Barrett Drive, on the eastern edge, one of the ridges aims directly for the Todd River. At three metres high, the sacred larva never makes the water thanks to a slapdash bulldozer that beheaded the landform in 1983.
Nowadays, for dreamtime reason, that same ridge will earn you a $20,000 fine should you stroll its crest.
But back to the Todd. As rivers go, the Todd is a 50km misnomer. On average, Alice gets 25cms of rain a year – if she’s lucky. Several years are recorded in the weather log where the town cops zero from New Years Day to Auld Lang Syne. As proof, the Todd is made of sand.
Dig, say locals, and you’ll find guppies buried in the riverbed, lying in suspense until the next downpour. Granted, Alice is the kind of town where that crazy talk can almost be countenanced, but locksmiths and I didn’t come down in the last shower. Hardly a cloud, race eve is hot with no suggestion of rain. We hit the bar.
As you’d expect, Bojangles Saloon in Alice’s heart is wall-to-wall bizarre. Two steroid androids man the swing doors, opening up a world that John Wayne may recognize through the bottom of a rum glass. Karl the Croc – in pelt form – lies above the main bar. An olive python licks her lips in a glass cage. Ned Kelly guards the peanuts barrel – poorly – as a thousand shells crunch under bikie boots.
Just for the boat-race, 1400 Harley owners have hit Alice. Backpackers are here too, jackeroos, soldiers, nomads, fugitives, and some yahoos in pirate costume.
Next day, at the street parade, the same guys are tossing lollipops from their four-wheeled ship, the Nautius. Yanks from Pine Gap, a satellite tracking station nearby, neutralize bystanders with mega-soakers. Kids scream. Locksmiths chant. The figurehead dragon aboard the Viking ship blows talcum as a kilted bikie – from the Central Highlands of NSW – blows kisses at grandma.
Broken into three arenas, the regatta is an Olympiad of Odd, from Under-16 Sand Shoveling to the Open Bathtub Derby. It’s a five-hour freak-show, a gala of nonsense and silly buggers to see PT Barnum twirling in his grave.
Canoes on iron wheels squeak down mini-railway tracks, propelled by paddling shovels. Like captive hamsters, girls run along the sand inside steel-mesh wheels for the iron woman showdown. A punk in a surgical mask bounces on a boogie board, towed in haste by a boat of stampeding casino dealers. It isn’t natural. But you can’t look away.
‘We’ve had no deaths in our 44 years,’ says Scott Boocock, the ringside flack, ‘and no drownings.’ Mind you, their biggest chance was dashed in 1993 when the Todd decided to be contrary – and flood. Curiously, the regatta was cancelled due to water.
Finally, the Head of the River is called, and racers stow their Crown Lagers in preparation. I’ve spent months ramping up for this event, scaling sand dunes and watching Irene Cara’s feet in that Flashdance video: I’m up for the rumble.
One by one we dip our noggins and squeeze within the hull. Our vessel is a surfboat with no deck. And no rudder – the craft skews as soon as the starter’s gun explodes. Ten cha-cha steps into the race and we’re heading for the bikies at the Slurpee stall.
If not for the mob-laughter, the language amidships would make a genuine sailor blush. Our hairy legs are churning but the boat seems to own a GPS system all of her own. The eco-lodge guides in the parallel lane are bolting ahead. The croupiers have already rounded their barrel. As mariners, these seven locksmiths are, well”¦fine locksmiths.
Of course, my shipmates aren’t true locksmiths. Under the banner of Assa Abloy the crew hails from all corners of the hardware world, from sales to design to construction clients, but for the sake of triumph – or survival – we’re all lumped together in the same boat.
Our marker buoy is a blur – in a bad way. It collapses below our hull, as we lose the electroplater from Springvale off the starboard gunwale. It’s carnage at sea. The eco-lodgers are a good two leagues avast, and the croupiers pull faces off the port bow. By the time the Viking with the fire extinguisher looms into view, we’re grateful for the hosing.
At the finishing line we keel over. The navigator quits for a XXXX. Our faces, smudged in sand and sweat, wear this matching set of stupid grins. Our dash is done, and talk of trophies confined to next September. Brothers in arms, we tramp nor-west for the hospitality tent, all bar the electroplater who sits in a heap, awaiting the air-and-sea rescue. Alice, oh Alice, you can be a cruel mistress.
[The regatta is ‘run’ the 3rd Saturday of September in Alice’s heart. Anyone is welcome - you can just rock up on the day to watch, or scramble in a boat borrowed or created. All proceeds go to local charities as determined by Rotary. Thanks to Assa Abloy for the chance of glory we so emphatically blew.]