Today is Saturday, which means tomorrow is Sunday, when the city buses do not operate. That means that I needed to get my long distance wandering done today. By 8 am I was at the bus stop, waiting for bus 401, which for AUS$ 3 took me to the south and dropped me at the footpath of the Alice Springs Desert Park. This is a commercial venture, at the foot of the MacDonald Range, where you can walk through the desert, learn about the vegetation, and see typical desert animals kept in wide enclosures.
An easy walk took me from the place where the bus dropped me off to the park, just in time to rush to a ranger talk about emus (on the way there I saw the exhibit with the dingos, which looked to me like quite healthy short-haired dogs). Emus are the large ratite birds of Australia, cousins to the rheas of South America, ostriches of Africa, and cassowaries of Papua-New Guinea. They are definitely ugly looking birds, and I am wondering why exactly did evolution feel the need for such an odd-looking "duck". They are large and generally left alone by local predators, but if a dingo wants to try his luck he will probably be stabbed by the nasty looking middle toe as the emu karate kicks him on the face. Or maybe the emu will just turn around and leave the dingo in the dust. Male emus have the honor of being the best fathers ever, since they are the ones that hatch the eggs and raise the chicks until they are almost adult size. Female emus are ... well ... disaffected mothers to say the least.
Then it was time to hurry to the raptors talk, where the young trainer did a marvelous job introducing us to two fast kites, a cool owl, a not-so cool "froggy" that looked like an owl but also camouflaged like a dead branch, a beautiful brown eagle, and a black-breasted buzzard. These buzzards are very fond of emu eggs, and have naturally adopted the strategy of picking up a pebble, maybe the size of a ping-pong ball, and whacking the egg with it until the shell breaks. How is that for a tool-using bird?
After running from one presentation to the other, it was delightful to just walk through the desert and admire the great variety of grasses, shrubs, sand flats, clay pans, and woodland trees. This is not a Sahara-like desert but more a Living Desert, like the Mojave. There are of course all sorts of highly venomous snakes, but in contrast to our rattlesnakes, which have large fangs, Aussie snakes have short, delicate fangs, who would be unable to penetrate the leather of your boots or a pair of sturdy jeans. They are very poisonous, however, so even the smallest scratch has to be pressure bandaged and brought to the immediate attention of a doctor.
The desert spiders are not much to look at (nothing to compare with the plate-size spiders of the northeast coast), but the variety of lizards, skinks, spiny chameleons, and monitors is staggering. My favorite is the spiny chameleon, not only because he looks like a tough guy, but also because it has a spiny knot in the back of its head that makes it look like it has another head guarding its rear.
There are of course lots of nocturnal critters in the living desert, including bats, rats, bandicoots, malas (small wallabies), regular wallabies, and of course kangaroos, My all time favorite, however, is the echidna, which starts life as a tiny "manatee-looking" naked mouse, turns into a cute ball of fur, and ends being a 2-kilo mass of sharp quills.
Oh, time for the next talk, entitled "Survival in the desert". Our ranger was a veritable font of aboriginal knowledge (some of it learnt from his aboriginal girlfriend), and had us mesmerized with tales of how the aborigines have successfully survived in one of the harshest climates in the world. Water is, of course, the first order of business, and aborigines have learnt to find it by studying the layout of the land and making shallow holes to tap into groundwater, but they are also good at lightly cooking their veggies or their meat to conserve the natural moisture of these foods. They are gatherers of course, so every grass is a source of grain, and many bushes are sources of edible fruits. Once grains and fruits are collected they are ground, mixed into a stiff dough with a bit of water, and then baked on the coals to form an elongated muffin that is a common staple.
Cooking a kangaroo is a relatively simple task. You singe the thin hair by dragging the roo over the coals, make a pit and line it with leaves and coals, drop in the roo with feet sticking up from the ground, cover it with more leaves and coals, and an hour later pull it out by the feet and dinner is served. Kangaroo tail is a fine delicacy (think oxtail soup, yumm), and looking at those muscular tails I wonder if it would be worthwhile to import them into the US as a substitute for oxtail (have you seen the prices for oxtail in the supermarket these days?)
Throughout the day the temperature did not get above 22 degrees C (67 degrees Fahrenheit), so I enjoyed myself enormously. Back in town, however, I discovered that at 4 pm downtown Alice was deserted and all commerce was closed. I suspect that Sunday is dead as well, which makes me wonder what I will do with myself tomorrow. Fortunately I have a comfortable room in the second floor, so perhaps I will read on my balcony and just enjoy seeing the world go by.
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