Around The World Without Flying: A remarkable lady, and my first visit to Alice Springs

Goodness, time has flown since I wrote my last post! And Christmas Day is just one month away today! I have been absolutely flat out, as you may expect, still catching up with different friends and doing so many necessary tasks. Of course for eight months I was spared from cooking, housework, ironing, laundering the household linen, watering the garden, and so forth, so I really cannot complain. In fact I have rather enjoyed taking all these responsibilities up again.

I promised to tell you a story about a lady I met on the Ghan, and to introduce you to Alice Springs.

I am changing the details about the lady a tad, as I do not know her name or how to contact her to ask her permission to tell her story. So often you are ‘ships in the night’ with fellow passengers on any form of transport, but especially on trains when you are thrown together for just a couple of days. And yet some people can make an enormous impression on you that stays with you forever. Such was the case with this lady. I shall call her Anne. She was just a few years younger than me, I would think, and very dignified and self-possessed.

Anne and I began to chat over a meal, but moved to the lounge car and continued our conversation for quite a while. Anne began to tell me her story when we are talking about what we had done in our earlier lives and I mentioned I had been a teacher. She told me that when she was only about ten years old, one of her teachers had told her she ‘would never amount to anything’ because she was always late to school. What a dreadful thing to say to a child! Did the teacher not investigate why she was late?

The reason why she was late was because her mother was running a nursing home but had been enticed by some colleagues into going for a drink after work with them when she was having a struggle with doing both that and looking after her children on her own. (Her alcoholic husband had abandoned them some time ago.) There were still five children at home, the oldest girl being Anne. Very soon Anne’s mother became an alcoholic as well, so of her own initiative Anne took command, not only doing the housework and cooking for her family but also cooking for the residents of the nursing home. She made countless breakfasts and packed lunches before she left for school! This continued for some years. When she was in her mid-teens she trained as a chef and eventually set up her own catering business, which was so successful she provided employment for many young people. She was really proud of the fact that she involved them in all the decision-making for the business and gave them opportunities to use their initiative and to be creative. I asked Anne how she felt about her mother. She said she felt sorry for her, even then, as a child.

What an incredible, inspiring woman! I encouraged her to write a book about her life. But Gee! I wish her unkind teacher could read it!

In this post I am only talking about my very first visit to the town of Alice Springs in central Australia. This was an official 4-hour tour run by the Ghan. While it was fairly short, it was most memorable, because we visited several significant sites.

First we went to the headquarters of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, an amazing organisation that gives essential medical support to all those who live in remote areas, flying doctors and nurses to their properties or to nearby airstrips in light aircraft to treat them on site or to take them off to hospital. There we saw a movie about the incredible work they do and then were given a wonderful morning tea of scones and jam and cream and tea and coffee.

After that we visited an old gaol, where compassionate and innovative work had been done rehabilitating the women prisoners, way ahead of its time. The women were taught many skills that they were able to to use when they left, and were allowed to decorate their rooms and make them a personal space. There we also saw a display of the amazing and valuable contribution many pioneer women, both black and white, had made to the outback region and to their local communities - usually unacknowledged and rarely mentioned in history books.

Next we visited the War Memorial on a hill overlooking the town, and then the early telegraph station. There were saw the almost dry springs that led to the name ‘Alice Springs’, named after the wife of one of the personnel there.

In a later visit I stayed in Alice Springs and explored the MacDonnell Ranges behind it, which you can see in a couple of the photos. They were just stunning. That will be in a much later post.