The Incredible Shrinking Town

There's been some fun the last few weekends. Some of the hotels here have a deal for locals where if you eat in their restaurant, you can stay and use the pool. It's pretty neat. The town pool is really nice, but it's fun to be somewhere else for awhile.
In fact, that feeling of - that's great, but what else is there?- starts to pervade a lot of one's life here. Alice is an island. It is an oasis surrounded by desert - thousands of miles of it. A ten minute drive has you on the edge of town and there is no town ahead of you... for hours and hours.
There is heaps to do and see here, in Alice. It just starts to occur to one (ahem, me) that this is all there is. There's lots of it (I realize I'm repeating myself), and it's beautiful and fun and wonderfully interesting, but then... there's nothing else. Sometimes, I worry that heaven will be kinda similar. "Halleluia, halleluia..." Four billion years down; eternity to go.
Back to the hotel pool - we were all hungry after church last Sunday and we decided to eat at the Alice Springs Resort where Tom's group had had a Christmas party.
The food was tasty and the staff was so nice. We were the only people in the restaurant. There was no one else at the pool either. Thomas had been asking to drive his remote control boat somewhere and the glimmer of an idea came to us both. I asked the manager if we could drive the boat around the pool so long as we didn't bother anyone. In true Aussie style: "Aw sure , no worries."
We had the pool as our personal marina for a good 3 hours. There was a stone fountain in the middle which added to the excitement with "driving blind" behind it. Tom and I both raced the boat swimming. The skipper was in fits of giggles. The flies and some other patrons came in about mid-afternoon, so we headed home - 7 minutes away.
I hear there are three or four more hotels in town with the same lunch/swim deal. We'll have to work the circuit. Thomas took the photo in our backyard to look like one he saw in a catalog. He's quite fascinated by marketing; especially the Sham-WOW!

Thanks for Everything

Nope. There is no way to have an American Thanksgiving in Alice Springs. People try...and try...and there are turkeys in shops and cans of pumpkin stuffed in suitcases from trips home. The Saturday prior, we were invited to a nice American gathering at a friend's house - 30 people; supremely brave woman. Still, no filling vs. stuffing wars, no keilbassi; there's no place like home.
Soooooo... why even try?!
We decided to throw tradition out the window and invent our own Aussie Thanksgiving. It was great!
My original plan was to get our barbecue grill Wednesday and have a cook-out at home. Alas, I forgot to never count on anything happening quickly here. The grill was available, but the truck wouldn't bring it from the warehouse until Thursday after 3.
I went to swim aerobics in the morning. Tom and Thomas built a cool robot sent from his pal, Carly back in Warrenton and then, we hit the outback trail!
I'd been hearing a lot about the Telegraph Station lately - a large historical/natural area just a couple kilometers from town. A friend had seen a 2-metre Perentie lizard very up-close there recently; another man went on about the nice trails and a local gal had recommended the carpark for kangaroo sightings in the evening. The also have grills - nice, push-a-button gas grills, free for the using.
We packed chicken breasts and thighs, drinks, lettuce and bread, mayo and the all-important Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce (feel free to send a can whenever you want). Cans of baked beans and corn rounded out the meal and I had baked a pumpkin pie with a grave and respectful nod to our fellow pilgrims. Oh, don't forget the camera and binoculars. Oh, and aluminum foil. Oh, something to put the leftovers in. Should we bring these apples? How about macadamia nuts? Oh, hand sanitizer and paper towels. Come on, get in the car!
It was a warm day, only in the 90's. There were nice tables at a good height to sit on as well as eat on. The birds were terrific. I heard the flute-like song of a pied butcherbird and found it sitting on the restroom wall. Flocks of Port Lincoln parrots were chasing each other through the palm trees. Tom and Thomas walked over to the visitors' center while I got the chicken sizzling.

Feeling very Pilgrimmy, we gave thanks a lot: for our home here in this wild, new land; for surviving 3 months armed only with a Visa card and SPF 45, for our friends and family back home.
Our sandwiches and sides were yummy. The company was interesting, too. Right about at pie time, a young kangaroo came hopping into the picnic area. He was in no hurry and soon laid down in the shade of a tree. Ok, "hopping" isn't the right word. See, roos have a kind of non-airborne movement where they are on all-fours and just go: paws.. feet... paws...feet. It's not hopping. Definitely not walking. It's good for eating grass. Let's call it "loping." So, he loped around a little and checked out the picnic table beyond ours. They (2 Aboriginal kids and a white woman) had left to play frisbee. When the Aboriginal kids saw the kangaroo, they crept slowly toward it making a soft clicking noise. It turned and loped right up to them!
Just kidding; it hopped away. When it did, it came on an angle toward us about 10 feet away. Can you find it in both pictures?
When it was at a comfortable distance again, it browsed some grass awhile then went its kangaroo way.
With the kangaroo gone, my men decided they'd had enough food and flies and wanted air conditioning and their robot again.
I told you it was a great day.

Mind the Gap

Daddy got to go to Sydney and Canberra for a week, so Thomas and I had our own adventures. We filled a magical Sunday with magical stuff. First: church, and promised a dollar, Thomas was good. Considering early martyrs paid with their lives, a buck isn't so bad. Plus, the exchange rate is currently 92 cents.
The plan was swimming in the backyard next, but since we were finally graced with a cooler day (temps had hit 110 the past week), we skipped that and Thomas found one of those ridiculous airplane tragedy movies on the telly. Written 20-odd years ago, it had become a comedy with flare guns shooting down fighter jets and flight attendants in mini-skirts climbing ladders - often.
By 2 p.m., we were ready for real-life and headed to Emily and Jesse Gaps.
No one living knows who Emily and Jesse were. Rumors they were daughters of an explorer have been proven untrue, but they have nice gaps. Local "Gaps," BTW, are not places to find deals on sportswear, but natural openings in the McDonnell Range which runs along the south side of this area.
They are about 10-15 minutes' drive away, but since I forgot to look at which road they were on, it took about an hour. When you visit, remind me to take Ross Highway.
Emily is first and very pretty. It is a registered sacred site and one of the most important in the "Dreaming Trail" of the aboriginal people who believe the caterpillar beings, who created the topography of this area, came to the surface here and spread out across the Simpson Desert. There was a major battle here between the caterpillar beings and the stinky beetle beings with great losses especially to the caterpillar side. Their guts dried and formed the rocks on which Thomas now climbs.
I can't seem to find out how old the rock paintings are, but they were there when Europeans came in 1871 and up to 13,000 years before that. They are maintained by generations of people who inherit the responsibility. Local mineral clays are used, mixed with animal fat.
The paintings are roped off and there is a barbed-wire fence a short way into the gorge. Like many places here, there are implied rules, but no way to enforce them. So, it is up to the individual. This individual chose to not cross the barbed wire even though there were about as many footprints in the sand beyond it as before it.
Hey, sacred is sacred and no one should have to pay me a dollar to be good.
Next stop: Jesse's place about 5 minutes down the road.
Our fly nets were very handy on this day as the other few tourists we saw spent a lot of energy constantly shooing.
I can't stop thinking of Jesse as the Jan Brady of the gaps. She's not quite as pretty... her paintings are ok, but she's no Marcia, er... Emily. Emily gets the exciting Caterpillar - Stinky Beetle battle. Jesse gets compared to Emu fat. There are some important ceremonial objects buried there. Both sacred sites are only for "initiated" men. If "initiated" calls to mind scary scenes from Roots and articles from National Geographic, you've pretty-much nailed it.
Same barbed wire a short distance in, same easy way around it if you want.
Next: back to visit our old friends, the wallabies at Heavitree Gap. This time, we were early but found them already waiting. This time, they were almost scary-friendly, climbing onto laps and digging into the food bag like crazy goats at a petting zoo. Thomas spent his time "training" them to sit up for food and follow a rock he had rubbed the smell of pellets into. We sat with the wallabies and watched the sun set on our really fun day.

NEW-BORN BABY TURNS SIX!!

Ah, 'tis true. Thomas Alexander is six years old. He's a lot more fun now. I see more and more glimmers of a sentient human being in there. He makes jokes that actually make sense (sometimes). He is reading more and more every time we turn around and continues to astound with Yoda questions like, "Can you count to one by infinities?" Maybe he's still so awful in church because he's a buddhist.
He officially passed his grade one advancement assessment with flying colors (!!), so he will proceed to grade 1 with his class in late January. I must point out, this is NOT skipping ahead. Although he has done terrific accomplishing so much in one quarter, he should be going on to grade 1 here, for his age. In August of 2011, when we come back to the US, he will be 3/4 through grade 2, but just starting start second grade in the states... we'll jump off that bridge when we come to it. I am just thrilled he is doing so well and loves school!
BTW, one question was: Which coin could buy the most lollies? Most kids pick the biggest coin. The Aussie 2-dollar coin is about the size of a nickel. He should get extra points for knowing what lollies are.
The festivities marking the turning of the six were many and varied. There were cupcakes for the class. I thought those balloon blowers were cute to stick in each, but didn't realize they honked. Can you imagine 21 kids with honking balloons? Cacophony is the only word for it. Good thing Mr. M has an unfailing sense of humor. He even tried to give Thomas 6 spanks "and one to grow on." Thomas escaped, but when was the last time a teacher could even playfully spank? 1970?
That evening, we had a few friends to Sammy's Pizza - sort-of the Chuck-e-Cheese of Alice Springs. They have an indoor play area with a slide and a network of soft, climby stuff. That's it.I must say, they're pizza is better than Chuck-e's and kids from 2 to 13 were happily playing and enjoyed their balloons and lollie-bags.
Thomas picked a Wall-E cake from Wendy's, which is Baskin Robbins. He has never seen nor heard of Wall-E to my knowledge. HOW does Disney DO that??
He had a wonderfully memorable and happy birthday. Now, I just have to deal with all the kids who want to come home with him to see his new toys. They're CRAZY!
(and I love it)

Desert Park

Now this a field trip. No going to visit the fire station. No seeing how the mail gets sorted.


This is an Aussie Field Trip, so bring water and watch for snakes!

First, Mr. M and Mrs. Mac gather everyone and their recess (that means snack) onto the bus. Mr. M is the teacher and drives the bus.
Off we go, kids! Here we are, kids!- about 200 meters up the road at the Alice Springs Desert Park. http://www.alicespringsdesertpark.com.au/
Since I was a helper-mommy, I drove Thomas straight there and he didn't get his school hat. He's the one in the tan with the attached fly net. All the kids thought that was way cool. Ah, to be six.

The park is a beautiful representation of various desert habitats - whether actual or created. There is also a Nocturnal House with bilbys, bandicoots, quolls, hopping mice and other really cute freaks scurrying about. Mid-way through our walk, we got to see the raptor show. These are the best-trained owls, kites and other birds I've ever seen.

They are PROS. Unfortunately, my camera skills are not nearly as refined and I mostly have pics of some guy standing in khaki shorts. The birds fly up at exactly the right time, show whatever behavior the guide is talking about, then disappear.

I promise, anyone who comes to visit us will see the Desert Park.



I think this is a black kite. Yes, they know it's brown.



They made some lush, tropical areas, too with flight cages of cockatoos, bush turkeys and

Look! A Kookaburra sits in an old... oh, nevermind.


We didn't make it to the kangaroo enclosure, the salt pans or the emus, but Mr. M says we'll go back before the school year ends in December. Wow, I hope grade 1 is this much fun. Ummm, for Thomas. Yeah.

Thomas: Geared-up and Gettin' Hot

So much to tell you about! I'm going to break it into several posts. Let's start with... Thomas! He spoke his first Australian word on Halloween. We were done trick-or-treating and were driving out of town to a star-gazing thing. We passed a really halloweened-up house and he said, "We should go back home and collect my pumpkin bag." Collect! They've gotten to his brain.

They've gotten to his body, too. His class and every elementary class in the school has had swimming lessons every day for the past 2 weeks. In nine classes, he's gone from a kid who screamed for a dry towel while getting his hair washed to swimming under water and retrieving toys from the bottom of the pool! I can't do that! Miss Taryn Nottle, the P.E. teacher at Living Waters school, gets all the credit. She spent her time with the kids who had the least experience and our Thomas bloomed like a waterlilly. Let him re-phrase that to, "I'm just like a boat now."

My aqua-aerobics classes are at this same town pool.
We set up one of those inflated-ring-topped waterbag pools in the backyard and we've all been enjoying it. Temps have already hit 105, but they hide the truth by saying it's, "42."

I think we'll spend a lot of time wet or indoors in the up-coming months.

It kind of messes with me to have people talking about spring horse race season and summer vacation coming up and Thanksgiving is around the corner and the stores have Christmas trees up.


Speaking of Halloween (I did up at the top, remember?), this is my friend, Renee.
How often do you think she gets to wear THAT vest?
Renee comes with Chloe, too cute in her handmade rainbow pony costume; also Ty, a Big Boy Thomas really likes and two teen girls who make great sitters.

Since this post is about Thomas, I guess I put them in to show we ARE making friends and even some little boy friends at school. No pics of them yet.
Oh, wait! Yes, on the field trip...

and now, for something completely different...

When I found out we were coming here, I started finding out about the Aboriginal people here. It's not easy.
I still have the tourist's viewpoint which is very thin. Our closest connection so far has been to have two young girls (14 and 10) ask us to call the police for them one night when Tom and I were sitting on the front porch. "A woman" had terrorized the younger girl at home with a knife and they had not been able to find any other relative's home to go to. The older girl said the woman had never acted like this before. Usually, when she got drunk, she would go to sleep. They sat on our porch until the police came, talked to the officer, then walked away.
The South Pacific Islander party I talked about in an earlier post was for Father Raass who is being sent from our parish to another. He has been among the indigenous people here for six years and tells a bit more:
http://www.centralianadvocate.com.au/article/2009/10/13/4845_news.html

Odd Bits

This will be a running list of things we find...let's say interesting, here.
The eggs are sold by how the chickens are kept: cage eggs, free-range, barn-laid. The price goes up by how well the hens are treated. Now, the same company will sell both cage and barn eggs. So, isn't that kind of extortion? "Pay $5 a dozen or the hen gets caged."
Ants. You can see more ants here in one day than you've seen in your WHOLE LIFE (if you're an American say, between 18 and 35). And they're FAST, so very, very fast. What's the hurry?
In a restaurant, even a pretty nice one, you sit and look at the menu, then go up to the counter, order and pay. Go to the glass cooler and take your bottle of tap water- usually in a decanter or clean wine bottle- and however many glasses you want. They will bring your food and drink and you'll never see them again. Obviously, no tipping. Almost everything comes with roasted pumpkin and/or beetroot (pickled beets).
Schnitzel is VERY popular.
Deluxe pizza has prawns and pineapple.
The language differences would fill a book; and has. My current favorites are:
thongs = flip-flops. I met a gal who couldn't figure out why "thongs" weren't allowed in restaurants - and how they knew!
whipper-snip = string trimmer
Stanley = razor knife
concessions available = discounts available for seniors, students, etc. (NOT hot dogs and drinks)
TEA is dinner.
Supper is a snack. I wondered why they asked who wanted to bring supper to the next Naturalists Club meeting and why Thomas's teacher said I brought him tea - it was a casserole for gosh sake!
The toilets give you a choice of a half flush or a whole flush.
Prostitutes advertise in the classifieds. "Minnie - Stay for a while, leave with a smile," seems to be a regular. The rest come and go ;)

People celebrate and happily share their cultural differences. At church, there's the African group, the Philipino group, the Islanders group. The South Pacific Islanders (i.e. Fiji, Bali) invited the whole congregation to a party. They dug a pit and made a fire in the bottom, when it turned to coals, they filled the pit with chickens, pork, curry casseroles, spinach, pumpkin and taro, buried it and let it cook all day. They dug it all up and boy, was it good!
There was traditional islander dancing after dinner, but it got late quickly and we had to get Thomas home. We did have some entertainment while waiting for the food to arrive. If you can't tell, that's one of the Missionaries of Charity nuns (Mother Teresa's gals) wailing on the drum.

There is a didgeridoo shop downtown where they give free lessons twice a day. They're beautiful and heavy. You play a didge by blowing raspberries into it; then, trying to make words with your raspberries. MUCH harder than it sounds. Look. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g592I-p-dc&NR=1 I'm told women are not supposed to play them, which is good because I could never carry off those horizontal stripes.
I joined the Alice Spring Field Naturalists' Club. We're birdwatching at the sewage ponds next Saturday.
I joined an aqua-aerobics class; about 5 other dugongs and me.
Tom is dabbling in aikido.

School Days

Thomas started Transition (Australian kindergarten) Tuesday, Oct. 6th; the day after Spring Break. We had all visited the school the week before and Tom and I were both overwhelmed how great it sounded: the kids spend a lot of time outside, they spend almost as much time on social skills as academics, they learn art, music and Japanese. Before sitting down to a reading or math lesson, they might do some jumping jacks or have a run around the oval.
The federal government just gave Living Waters 2.4 million dollars with which they are building a new library and computer lab. Another federal grant supplied all the classrooms with interactive white boards last year. This is a Lutheran School. Can you imagine the heads exploding should such a thing happen in the US?
Thomas's prior predictions that he would, "Never, ever, ever go to school, EVER!" were slightly off. I got him up and in his uniform. His socks itched, his shoes were too tight, he tore at the neckline of the shirt like it was a boa constrictor. Still, with granola bar in hand, he kind of happily buckled into the car.
Nrrrrrr.. nrrr....rrr....r. Dead battery.
Back out of the car, back in the house. I called the only 2 people I thought might be home and might have jumper cables. No answer.
Well, for 2 weeks we had no car and used cabs. No money.
Well, he could stay home one more day. No way.
I called the cab. They take plastic and were here in minutes. We enjoyed our first day very much.
The teacher, "Mr. M" (Misinskus), is a great bear of a man with bushy grey-black hair and beard to match. He spent his most recent years teaching out bush in schools with up to 4 grades in one room. Watching this big guy surrounded by 5 and 6 year-olds, you can see he loves his work.
Our first day of school had to be cut short right after skipping rope lessons inP.E., just so I could work on getting the car fixed.
No worries, Mate. The first repair shop I called came over, jumped the battery and led me back to the shop for a test. The battery was fine. Go up the road to another place and have the alternator checked. The alternator was fine. Good news is, they've seen this before. Everything in Alice is within a few miles, so there are lots of short trips. You run to the store, the school, the library. Turn the car off and on and off and on. You need a nice, long drive to recharge the battery. We weren't driving our car enough!
The whole time of the car repair and subsequent scenic tour, Thomas kept asking to put his uniform back on and go see if anyone was still at school. I told him he could go again tomorrow, if he was good. He's gone very happily every day since. Yay!
He's working on sight words, greater-than/less-than, counting by 2's and 5's and the finches in the classroom have laid 2 eggs.

Rock Wallabies

This past weekend, I had been invited to go yard-saling with a couple American Girls on Saturday and had a great time. My best score was a pair of Bushnell binoculars, a stunning ceramic bowl from, I since found out, an award-winning ceramicist, a dirty trowel, some tall glasses and a reel-type lawn mower - all for 40 bucks.
We have little lawn here. I wish we had none. We're in a desert and it's an embarrassing waste of water. It has its own sprinkler system and we Americans have the greenest lawns in town. Well, go us.
The second Thomas saw that reel mower, he was smitten. It's mechanical. It's mildly destructive. He gets to "drive" it himself. It spins, it chops, it slices, it dices...

And so, he mowed and mowed.
He mowed from noon till suppertime. It got dark and he hollered, fought and screamed at the injustice of having to stop. If I EVER blow this one like I did his fascination with doing laundry, I'll never forgive myself.
Sunday afternoon, he started using "the M word" again and Tom and I had to change the subject. We went off to Heavitree Gap Lodge. We'd heard you could feed the wild wallabies there. Boy, can you.
Of course, "wild" is relative. The lodge is a campground, motel, restaurant and grocery store. The camp store sells a bag ofwallaby feed for a dollar. Looks like rabbit pellets. We got there around sunset as that's when the wallabies come down from the McDonnell range for supper. About 2 dozen people and an equal number of rock wallabies were already paired up.
Briefly, wallabies are a small version of a kangaroo. This type is endangered as they used to be all over Australia and are now only in the rocks of the McDonnell range that runs alongside
Alice Springs.
I don't know how long people have been feeding the wallabies at Heavitree. Some were very tame and came right over to eat and could even be petted. Some hung back, took longer to approach or hopped away and hid.
Thomas joined right in. I watched him being so gentle with these soft, mysterious creatures, thinking what a great experience this is for him. Then, my brain said, "Excuse me? Get down there!" I made him scootch over and soon had myself a handful of feed and tiny black claws holding my finger. I beamed at Tom and said, "I'm in Australia feeding a wallaby."
We enjoyed it all, took photos and videos for about a half-hour until it was really dark. Tom and I started wrapping it up and he took the cameras to the car. I kept thinking I should keep one, but we'd gotten more than enough of photos.
Thomas kept at it and was trying to lure one adult away from a boy next to him when a tiny head, no bigger than a squirrel's, popped out of her pouch. Two big papery ears followed. A tiny nose sniffed at his hand and he held one bit of feed out to the little joey who took it.
My mouth hung open. Tom went back for the camera. There, in the dark, while Momma munched away, we each got to touch the tiny baby's wee head.

Less than 10 minutes from our house, every day at sunset, this magic happens.

Rock Walls

I'll start with last weekend and go forward. Blogs want you to go backward, but who's the boss, here?
We went to an a'capella concert at Trephina Gorge last Sunday. It was my mom's birthday and I was too sad in the morning to go to church, so a choir concert in a gorge seemed a good substitute. God was there, too. The high rock walls make a natural sound shell and 50 voices rolled across the sand.
The group was "Asante Sana." If you've ever seen Lion King, you've heard similar music. We video taped it for Tom's mom. It's the kind of thing that would leave her speachless. No comments about speachless mothers-in-law.
Trephina Gorge is about an hour from town and the drive is mostly one-lane. I don't mean one lane going each way, I mean ONE lane. If someone happens to be coming the other way, you both make room. There were cattle along the road and signs telling you to watch for them as there is no fence.
On the drive back, I saw a sign for Corroboree Rock. Not having seen enough rocks yet, (and this one had its own sign!), I turned off.
Like most geological formations around here, it is a sacred site. Like most geological formations around here, you can understand why.
The huge rock bears no similarity to the smaller rocks around it. It simply jutts out of the ground, tall and broad and very thin. The top photo is the "face"and the bottom, the side. You can walk around it in about 10 minutes while swatting flies off your face. We're told "Fly season" hasn't started yet.
It was getting dark, so we made for home. Decided to pick up dinner at the Red Rooster in Alice which is across from the McDonald's. It is the Boston Market of Australia. The roasted chicken comes with roasted potatoes, pumpkin, peas and garlic bread. It was pretty good and when I thought we had it all eaten, I found the chicken was stuffed - grey but tasty.

Buckle up and Hold That Lizard

What has the steering wheel on the right, the stick shift on the left and scares the *&^@! out of me? Our new car! What fun.
We got a Mitsubishi WhoCaresItMoves. It's silver. All cars here are white or silver to reflect the sun. So it's only 500 degrees when you get in instead of 505. Yes, it is just a "car." No 4-wheel drive, extra gas tank, 4 feet off the ground thing with a roo-bar in front. Sorry to all you folks who think we're roughing it on the desert frontier - that's a good 10 miles from here.
The couple we bought it from lives a block away. They just got married. The husband works with Tom and the wife is from Elysburg, PA. Yes, and she worked at Knoebel's campground and Geisinger.
I must say, when I first took it out for a solo drive (why endanger more lives than necessary?) I started grinning, then smiling this big, unstoppable smile! The cab drivers have been nice and we've gotten everywhere we needed to go, but the freedom of driving, alone, in Australia, is such a thrill.
The round-abouts in town are much easier than they looked from the backseat of a cab. Remembering to stay on the left is fine if there are other cars and I even parallel parked today with only one re-do. I keep an overly-firm grip on the wheel and will not dare put music on yet, but it's coming. I still turn on the windshield wipers when I mean the turn signal, but I was told that's called "The American Wave."

THE REPTILE CENTRE

This new-found freedom made me drag Thomas out of the house yesterday to find somewhere he could play without involving me. I added the library, a haircut and the promise of ice cream if the haircut went well.
We found the library but went past it to find lunch. Since that involved parking(!), walking around and getting turned-around, we lost the library but found the Reptile Center! I had been wanting to go since we got here, but we just hadn't.


It's really a made-over house with a crocodile in the backyard. Seriously, I think the man just turned his brick rabler into a snake and lizard zoo. It's neat! Lots of glass enclosures of really deadly snakes, many lizards both behind glass and outside in short-walled pens and then a salt-water crocodile.
"Terry" floats in his concrete swimmin' hole. Terry mostly spends his days below water, so you can go down steps and see him from underneath. He surfaces every 15 minutes or so to breathe and look longingly at unsuspecting, delicious tourists, mutters to himself about the thick glass and rebar fence, then dejectedly sinks again.
The staff puts on a show and tell in the air-conditioned "fossil cave" 3 times a day. It was very good. The young woman told us how to act around local snakes - run if they're at least 10 feet away, stand perfectly still if they're less. She brought in a friendly cadre of a python, bearded dragon, blue-tongue skink and a 2-headed or sleepy skink which was my favorite.
If a predator grabs them by the tail, they poo copiously in its mouth, and if that isn't enough, swing their actual head around, latch on and cannot let go until they feel safe again. Otherwise, they hardly move.
Thomas held all the animals he deemed appropriate but could hardly wait to get back to his true friend - a sweet little monitor lizard who simply walks around the floor where he pleases. I forget his name as he was named after someone I never heard of, but I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot of him.
Of course, the questions at bedtime were, "Do you think we could have a lizard that walks around our house?"
"No."
"Do you think it will want to snuggle with me in my bed?"

The haircut went well. He picked honeycomb-caramel ice cream.

Desert Festival

Alice Springs is having Desert Festival the next 10 days or so. It all started with a parade, and what a fun parade it was! Starting with young drummers who were SO tight and just cracker-jack on their beautiful instruments, followed by giant desert insects and arachnids, all made by the local school kids with volunteer artists.

The whole troupe moved on to the ANZAC oval - a park near the top of downtown. There was a stage set up and most of the parade groups performed into the evening.

The Maoris' performance was chilling. We've since learned Maoris are the native Polynesians of New Zealand. The boys wore black or bead loin cloths and held long sticks. Their faces and bodies were painted. An adult led them in a stomping, threatening, shouting chant which made me think, "A hundred years ago, coming on this group in the jungle...we'd all be dead. I'm glad we're all friends now...W-W-We are, right?"
I couldn't get a good photo of it, but here's a similar video from You Tube.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-lrE2JcO44&feature=related
and here it is done by gingerbread men http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cTJla0i_Kw
I now know it's called a Haka and is understandably very useful at rugby games.

The girls and young women were in purple batik sarongs and did an equally fascinating, graceful hand-gesture dance. A little blonde girl next to us started miming along with them as easily as if she were doing Itsy-bitsy Spider. Think they learn it in pre-school?

There was a Kids' Day at the same park Sunday. Too hot and too little shade for these Yanks.
Thomas was whiney and I was intolerant. We cut it short and walked over to Target - a small, messy version of a US one. I think I figured it out - with the seasons opposite here, they send all the last season's stuff over and charge full price again. Ok, double full price. Did I mention I was hot?
Enjoying a couple cold drinks in the foodcourt, an Aboriginal woman came up to me with a traditional dot painting. It had happened a couple times before when we were in a cafe or walking Todd Mall and I always shook my head, more out of apprehension than anything. This time, I looked and I actually liked the one painting. She named her price which got lower when I said I wanted to think about it, then climbed higher by 15 bucks as we talked, but knowing I just dropped 10 bucks on 2 slushies, I let it happen.
They're each about 14" square, or whatever that is in metric. I really like the one with the honey ants and witchety grubs going to the billabong under the 2 women, their digging sticks and coolamon. She said she'd sign it, but I guess that meant I needed to give her a pencil. To be perfectly ignorant, I doubt I'd recognize her again.

What a short, strange trip it's been.