Outback road trip diary notes day 4: Erldunda to Alice Springs

Left Erldunda on a relatively short 200 kilometre leg to Alice Springs - this meant we could have a leisurely late start because there was no need to get up early to travel over a thousand kilometres as we had done the day before.  To know one only has to travel 20% of your previous day's journey was a comforting thought.  So while normally 200 kms would seem a trip of significance, on this day it just felt like driving down to the shops and back

Before we left Erldunda, I was able to demonstrate to Kiki that I am in the Mensa league when it comes to cleaning car windscreens.  Kiki says he is a genius when it comes to picking up or bagging dog shit.  Whether squeegee or cleaning up dog poo skills are more valued in today's society is a moot point.  While my squeegee work is not quick, which disqualifies me from tasks on the corner of Northbourne and Antill Streets in Dickson, ACT, it approaches perfection.  What pleases me most is how I combine a clear screen with a total lack of tell tale lines.  "What is my secret?" I hear you ask - well my brush strokes are not dissimilar to those I employ when painting walls or works of art.  It is important to have pride in the most menial tasks be it flossing your teeth or erecting an umbrella on a balcony.  My father taught me such zen like contemplative diligence is one of the keys to fulfilment - in his later years many thought he should write a book on how this philosophy infused his life.  I was to be his amanuensis.  Its title was to be 'The Tai Chi of vice regal cooking'.  Like the tome about my own life, a story of triumph over adversity tentatively titled 'All this with a horse shoe shaped kidney', it remains unrealized.

Because we had plenty of time in Erldunda, there was a chance to view the enclosures which held emus, an enormous echidna made out of fibro cement and an equally large inanimate frill necked lizard.

Each was at least two metres tall & if they had been alive a battle between them would have been on the scale of King Kong versus Godzilla.  Australia is well known for its large things and these include different creatures - e.g. Adaminaby's 15 metre long trout and Ballina's big prawn.  However, Erldunda is the only place where these monuments are fully fenced and roofed in, which makes viewing them difficult.  What motivates this claustrophobic approach to the display of gigantic animal models is unclear - maybe authorities are concerned they could be stolen.  Kiki told me about a spate of model cow thefts in the beef city of Rockhampton, which necessitated keeping the plaster cast bovines in a pen so they could be kept under surveillance 24/7.  More recently he reported how Tailem Bend's model gorilla and pig pushing a mower are kept under lock and key at night.

So as well as being a nation of big things, Australia is a nation of petty thieving, what with in recent times a large boulder being stolen from the national rock garden in Canberra.

Maybe fencing the big model frill neck lizard and the huge echidna in makes it easier for the enclosed emus, because they can think they are not the only creatures confined and the immobile creatures serve as model prisoners for their feathery inmates. Or perhaps seeing how the fence keeps in such large creatures makes the emus realize there is no escape.  The psychology of incarceration is fascinating, whether it involves deterrence or cross species group think, particularly to a psychologist like KiKi.

At a slightly more mundane level, Kiki had a toasted ham cheese and tomato sandwich at the next roadhouse called Stuart's Well.  Many of the locations dotted throughout the outback are named after precious sources of water and bear such descriptors like 'Well' and 'Springs'.  I ate  a corner of his sandwich providing me with adequate sustenance and taking a few calories from Kiki's perpetually bloated daily intake.

Nearby we stopped briefly at the monument to four people who were killed in the Northern Territory's one and only cannonball run from the South Australian border to Darwin.

In this event competitors were allowed to drive as fast as they could on the outback roads.  Unfortunately at this point a car piloted and navigated by two Japanese ploughed into two race officials by the side of the road.  All four were killed in a peacetime event redolent of the one and only conflict between Nippon and the antipodes where the actions of kamikaze first came to the fore.

Between Stuart's Well, with its rather tawdry dick joke in the toilet

 and arrival in Alice Springs, we briefly contemplated taking a 40 kilometre detour to Rainbow Valley,

which Kiki says bears some resemblance to Monument Valley in the United States of America.  I would like to have seen Rainbow Valley but Kiki, who is more risk averse than a condom wearing Volvo driver, was worried about getting bogged so we ended our first foray into the red sand country before it began.

So we then drove on to Alice Springs to Alice on Todd River apartments.  It was a great place, with two separate bedrooms.  It had a very utilitarian kitchen table which was bolted to the dining room floor.  Both Kiki and I have never stayed in accommodation with a table bolted to the floor.  We just took it as another sign of the level of theft in the Northern Territory, where both animal sculptures and furniture are liable to be stolen.

From there we ventured to the local Telstra shop to get Kiki's old phone reactivated after the new one was shattered.  A guy called Panos tried to get Kiki to phone Telstra help desk headquarters somewhere in India, but Kiki rightly baulked at this and asked Panos to do it.  Panos acceded to Kiki's request but I think this had something to do with him realising I had Greek heritage.  After Panos's initial reluctance, me turning the charm level to high meant we left the shop on good terms, with Panos not charging us for the new SIM card he inserted in Kiki's old phone.

There was no joy to be had from the local iPhone repairer who said $600 and ten days would be required to bring the shattered iPhone back to its former state.  Not even my high level of persuasive and diplomatic skills could elicit a different answer from the tech heads.

Kiki then took me to grab some lunch at Nongs Thai take away.  Kiki said he realised the food there wasn't much good but found the stupid name irresistible.  We then drove up Anzac Hill to eat our lunch. The hill and its name epitomise the Eurocentric naming of things in the outback.  Here is a prominent lookout and instead of it being known by its Aboriginal name, Atnelkentyarliweke, it is named after Australian military history's foundation event at Gallipoli.

After that, we went to an art gallery – normally $15 but we got in for free after I protested effectively at the being asked to pay for half an hour's viewing of art and photography.  Inside we saw paintings by Albert Namatjira and his family and some portraits of some significant people in the Northern Territory.

Exposure to high culture meant we had developed a thirst so we went to get some beers and wine from a drive-in bottle shop nearby and got interrogated by a cop about where we were from and our drinking habits - I found it like going through passport control in the USA.

We then went for dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant outside town, which Kiki had trouble finding it in the dark. It reminded me of an outdoor restaurant in Singapore.  I saw a mouse and a cockroach scuttling along the ground nearby and this didn't help my appreciation of the cuisine, which was pretty ordinary.  I guess it is a mistake to order prawns in batter this far from the ocean - it seems with battered seafood, the further inland you go, the greater the ratio of batter to seafood.

We ended the day with a trip to the local Coles where Kiki had problems with the automatic check out.  Surprisingly he didn't do his block at the malfunctioning machine and its "unexpected item in the bagging area" so my calming presence must be having the desired effect on him.