A little bird told me that temperatures in the Central Valley of California are reaching 110 degrees Fahrenheit over the next few days. Here in Alice we have had several days of perfect weather, with a high of 67 F, a light breeze, and shiny sun. Of course this is a biased view of Alice and central Australia, where temperatures of 110 F are quite common during the summer. Remember the survival strategy of the aboriginal folk: Get your work done between dawn and 10 am, sleep under the shade of a bush over the day, and become active again late in the afternoon.
I woke up early and went to the car rental agency to see about renting a car for the day, but it was expensive (US$ 100) and only included 100 km. Ha, with that I would not be able to go anywhere in this part of the desert. Then I tried a motorcycle shop, but they didn't do rentals, nor did they know of anyone who did. OK, so long-distance trekking was out of the question. Finally, I settled for renting a bike for just moving around town (US$ 30) and had another beautiful day looking at the surroundings of Alice. My first stop was at the old telegraph station, which has been preserved as a living-history museum, right by the original Alice Spring (or water hole, as I explained before).
Then I went to the Alice Springs School of the Air, which claims the honor of being the first school ever to use radio to connect with students in the far-flung corners of the outback in 1951. They started in Alice Springs and piggy-backed onto the Flying Doctors Service network, enrolled a few dozen kids living in the outback, and in combination with the parents (or local hired tutors) delivered K-9 instruction. It is somehow similar to home schooling, and after the pandemic indistinguishable from online instruction. They now have about 10 school centers covering all of Australia.
From radio they tried to move unto television in the 90's (maybe at the same time Mexico was experimenting with its Tele Secundaria) but it didn't work out, and in the late 90's they jumped on the internet wagon to a pattern we are all familiar with.
In historic retrospective it was a fabulous effort, but it seems to me that it has evolved into a kind of elite school for the kids of station owners. It is open to all, of course, but I didn't see any aboriginal kids in the videos, and when asked our guide said aboriginal families prefer to send their kids to aboriginal schools. Presumably the state government has to establish a school anywhere there are more than 15 kids, but I remain skeptical.
I then went for a long ride along the River Todd, which right now looks like a completely dry sand bed, but a log stuck on a branch 3 m from the ground tells me that it can carry a lot of water after a severe rainstorm.
I then followed the foot of the MacDonnell range (which in past emails I have misspelled as "MacDonald") for maybe 10 km, enjoying the slow ride through the desert, and then parked the bike and walked a couple more kilometers to an outcrop of an augen gneiss that looked very different from the overlying quartzites.
By the time I got back to the bike I noticed that my butt was sore from the narrow, hard seat, and when I finally reached the bike shop my legs were starting to ache. I am starting to get too old for this kind of exercise :(
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