Day 63: Alice Springs, Australia (March 11, 2011)

As I suspected, Alice Springs is more of a jumping off point to more interesting sights than a destination in and of itself.  I checked out a good deal of the town today, some of which was just running errands:  the post office, the grocery store, confirming my tour booking, etc.  I learned that I will need enclosed walking shoes for the tour (sigh @ having to buy more stuff) but I found a pair of grey Ked-like shoes at Target for $10.  I've actually been wanting a pair like them, so I didn't mind buying them, but I will mind carrying them around.  The funny part though:  I wear a children's shoe size in Australia!  And not the largest, almost-adult size, either.  I had to keep trying on smaller and smaller pairs until I found one that fit.  When I told that to the girl at the tour office, she said she cannot buy shoes in Asia, because her feet are too big.  She's an australian size 9, which must be an american 12, if the shoe sizes scale up one-to-one.

I did check out a couple of attractions in town.  The National Pioneer Women's Hall of Fame was sort of a museum of the lives of women in settler times in the Australian Outback (capitalized?).  European women, that is, except for a few aboriginal women who happened to be friends with the european women.  From what I could tell, europeans started settling the middle of Australia in the late 19th Century.  The museum was housed in a former (wait for it) Gaol, which the town fought really hard for a few years ago to make sure it wasn't demolished after it was closed.  So the historically important buildings of the jail are still up and open to visitors.  There's not much to say about the Gaol; it's been cleaned up and didn't have a whole lot of history, unless you count some drama in the mid 20th Century involving some warden's wife who didn't like cooking for the inmates.  Oh and it's almost entirely empty, except for this one display in one cell, which scared the crap out of me because I wasn't expecting it:

This would scare me even if it wasn't hiding behind a corner in an abandoned jail.

Note the toothbrush and toothpaste.  It was bizarre.  Also bizzare was this mural on one of the cell walls.  Is that Charles Manson?!  I meant to ask one of the staff, but forgot about it by the time I left.

The other place I visited was a base of the Royal Flying Doctor Service.  The RFDS is a group of decidated doctors, nurses and pilots who fly all over the Australian Outback, and sometimes between major cities, to tend to the sick and injured who don't have any medical care nearby.  It's been around since 1928, and sounds like it's pretty essential to the development of central Australia.  They make scheduled stops and emergency stops all over the country.  I wonder why I hadn't heard of it before?  The only thing worth photographing at the museum was this quilt, which I photographed for my mom.  I hope I captured enough of the details to give a sense of how fine it is (it's behind glass, so it's a little fuzzy):

Tomorrow at 6am I leave for a three-day tour of Uluru and surrounding sights.  So no updates for a few days, but I should have a lot of photos and hopefully stories when I next post.