The Red Center
by Tony Perrottet
Nothing sums up the sheer enormity of Australia like the Outback, a sun-scorched expanse that dwarfs even the American plains. On its lonely highways, cars pass so rarely that drivers will always salute each another with a laconic finger raised from the wheel.
Today, the Red Center’s main urban center is Alice Springs – a former telegraph outpost that has expanded into a vibrant city, where crusty characters with names like Stumpy, Wooky and Trots mingle happily in the pubs along with tourists as they enjoy their barbecues and beer. Even the jillaroos (female versions of jackaroos – cattle ranch workers) are perched on the bar stools drinking rum-and-coke from pint-sized mugs. But in order to experience the harsh Outback of myth, you have to leave the town limits in a 4WD vehicle. Beyond Alice lie wide dirt roads with corrugations that shake the fillings out of teeth. The rust-colored horizon seems to loom then dissolve, while mini-tornadoes called willie-willies sail through the haunted scrub. These long, straight roads pass by formations that seem almost like hallucinogenic visions: tea-brown rivers glimmering in the distance, cliffs that turn blood red in the sunset, meteor craters blasted 145 million years ago, natural galleries of Aboriginal art. At night, the crystal clear sky bursts with brilliant southern stars. (It’s not uncommon to see three shooting stars at once). And hidden in the remotest valleys are lush oases of 75-foot-tall livistona mariae palms, full of marsupials, fish and exotic bird life.
It’s no wonder the first British explorers who staggered into these secret groves thought they were dreaming.
