I posted the last entry with the last of the 4G signal for 500km. North bound, we watched the sun rise from the bus, from 5am pitch black to full colour. I’m using the first person plural because there was another young woman on the bus from Coober who was also on the bus from Adelaide. She’s a Canadian who can sleep easily on buses and who also, like me, likes to watch English-language movies with the subtitles on. I was dying to see red earth all morning. I’m not sure if it’s classified as desert here but it’s even greener than south SA. The vegetation doesn’t reach much higher than the horizon line and it’s mostly covered with small dense shrubs or grey, green and the pale violet of their hair-like branches.
Water has pooled and glistens in patches of the red earth. In places, and because the eye catches it for fractions of a second only, the wind makes the ripples seem like tiny clay dunes. I joke to myself that I am Terra Madre because it is sunny wherever I go but really I have just managed to navigate the various severe weather systems better than usual. When I was in Adelaide the centre was experiencing heavy rain, and now that I’m in Alice the storms have found Adelaide and there is water in the gullies here for me to marvel at. A once-in-three-years occurrence. I’m going to say that this is why I didn’t want to catch the Overland a day later.
The energy of the town itself is similarly chaotic. On my last night, myself and a few friends went to karaoke at Uncles Tavern. The place was overflowing with people, representatives from across the globe and the socioeconomic spectrum. As the crowd became gradually more courageous and gradually more tired of the three middle-aged male karaoke veterans singing pub rock the night turned into a absolute mixed bag of entertainment. From the timid couple of girls singing Alicia Keys to the sweaty squat man singing power ballads (yes plural, yes better every time) around the entire perimeter of the tavern because it was a cordless mic. I did a Duffy song and some middle-aged ladies really liked it and showed their appreciation by dancing goofily along with me. A group of lawyers were going absolutely wild on the dance floor. It made me appreciate that karaoke (and alcohol) brought us all together, arms across strange shoulders, rendered less strange by the common knowledge of the lyrics and the movement of the music.
Many thanks to my gracious hosts Katie, Cass and Sophie. One’s feelings about a town are usually entirely dependent on one’s individual experience, and in a place such as this those experiences would be as diverse as the people who populate Alice. As such, my experience was one of abundant love and kindness, and I daresay I’ll even live here one day soon.
Next up – 975km bus ride to Mataranka.
b. c. s. 