![\"Alice](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/GhanAlice.jpg\")
<\/a>Even though flights to Alice springs are easy to book, and the town is often a quick pit stop on the way to Uluru, dig al title deeper. The Alice Sprigns to Uluru part of our documentary and our travels in Australia. The feel of a fresh breeze on your shoulders and on your face is a welcome relief after more than a day of recirculated air. As I had mentioned, our brief time shooting through the open window of the luggage car was a welcome luxury most passengers on the Ghan<\/a> do not get. Stepping out of the cocoon of the rail car and having all the fresh air we could taken in was still a relief. Then the utter singularity of the experience\u2026 of arriving in Alice,the Australian shorthand for Alice Springs\u2026 takes over.<\/p>\n It does start with the air, that flat heat which, even on a windy day, feels like someone left the iron on just a few inches from your skin. The dust that is everywhere\u2026 in the air, on every surface and in every crevasse. The people around us – there were Americans, but many more Indonesians, Filipinos, Chinese\u2026 we were the only Americans as far as the eye could see, and this is fascinating the first time you experience that. We had shared our general cabin area on the route from Adelaide with two Germans who had been much more prepared than we were, having chosen to ignore GSR\u2019s posted limits on both the size and scope of acceptable on-board baggage. One duffle bag had been filled with nothing but fruits and sandwiches, which we eyed hungrily throughout the journey. Since we had booked transit on what GSR calls Red Class, while we did have access to a dining car, we were not allowed to dine in the celebrated Queen Adelaide lounge car, and its white linen table service. Our meals were serviceable and better than we expected, but the fact of the matter is for all the incredible scenery, there\u2019s not much to do on the Ghan but eat, sleep and lay odds on which Tony Bennett classic will show up next on the overhead speakers. You get to know your neighbors very well on a twenty five hour overland trek through the outback.<\/p>\n Now, here we stood on the outskirts of Alice, which is to say, not very far from the inskirts. It hits you very quickly just where you are. This platform was, for decades, the most popular hangout in this corner of the Northern Territories. It\u2019s where supplies, food, movies\u2026 everything that made desert life not only palatable but survivable\u2026. showed up. If it didn\u2019t arrive by train, it didn\u2019t arrive at all, and if you couldn\u2019t find it in Alice, you probably weren\u2019t finding it anywhere. Even on a warm fall afternoon in 2015, I didn\u2019t feel very far removed from this chapter of outback history, with the Ghan\u2019s engines cooling, the bustle of travelers around us and the 25,000 or so permanent resident of Alice easily within walking distance of where we were standing<\/p>\n Of course, one of the truths about Alice Springs is there are usually more impermanent residents today. Alice is all grown up and pretty savvy about the world now. As filmmakers on the road, Alice was yet another location where a professional crew can\u2019t just set up the camera and start shooting. suppliesOur permits were safely stowed in our run bag, as they had been for Adelaide, Uluru and most other stops on our itinerary.\u00a0 Not only does the Stuart Highway connect Alice with the rest of the continent (although I use the word \u201chighway\u201d loosely. It\u2019s paved, there are cars, but at two lanes, it\u2019s not going to get you where you want to go in a hurry. Not necessarily a bad thing, but be warned), there\u2019s a pretty busy airport for a town this size, with service to Sydney, Melbourne and points beyond. You can, if you choose, fly into Alice Springs for the day. Many do.<\/p>\n It can be easy to feel a little jilted by the lack of romance around Alice, easy to note the Hungry Jacks (Australian for Burger King), the what I have to assume is one the last surviving K-Marts in the world, and the booming satellite installation business, the first feeling you have is that Alice has given up a bit of her soul. That\u2019s certainly how I felt as I ducked into the local Target for batteries and a bathing suit to replace the one I had lost along the way.<\/p>\n Of course, this is a pretty selfish attitude, and hardly fair to Alice or the people who live here. I think one of the biggest sins a traveler can commit is to act like a tourist\u2026 to demand the locals live in an historical state of suspended animation for the amusement of visitors. While one of the joys of traveling somewhere new is the fact that a place is not new, but rather \u201cnew to you,\u201d it seems unfair to require a destination recuse itself from the pleasures of modern life so the rest of us can experience their rustic past for ourselves. Who am I, it must be asked, to demand if Alice wants a McDonalds, that Alice can\u2019t have a McDonalds?<\/p>\n As always, the charm and delight of a locale new to you lies in those charms and delights found with effort, and the central idea of Alice is still very much the same. If you can\u2019t find it in Alice, you\u2019re not finding it. It doesn\u2019t matter whether it\u2019s the nineteenth century fear of running out of quinine or the twenty first century hassle of running out of saline. Yes, one is merely an inconvenience and one is life and death, but I didn\u2019t ask to go to Alice to cheat death and frankly, neither do most people. I rather like the idea that Alice Springs has a well stocked emergency room and daily flights in and out. I think when you look at this picture of the city from an overlook not two kilometers from the rail station, you still appreciate the isolation of the place.<\/p>\n It is, after all, impossible to ignore the nature of the place. The Alice Springs tourist attractions (or traveler attractions as I prefer to think of them) include the Strello\u00a0Aboriginal Research Center, an out of the way hangar housing the remains of an airplane owned by famed aviator George Kingston and a nature museum dedicated to showing off the varied outback environments. These are all attractions that would seem out\u00a0of place in Sydney or Melbourne because these Alice Springs attractions \u00a0all emphasize the otherworldly distance between Alice sprigs and everywhere else.<\/p>\n As we strolled through the tiny outdoor shopping area of Todd Mall, Aboriginal children were playing in the park next to us. The Australian flag hung limply near the city hall, occasionally bucked up by gusts of wind, but for the most part sagging and speckled with dust. Red Australian dust. The Australian penchant for layering everything with beets\u2026 a penchant which I do not now and will likely never understand\u2026 continued unabated. As in so many Australian towns, there was a well kept memorial dedicated to the soldiers of the first World War. There were more Australian soldiers per capita in World War One than any other country\u2026 and more casualties as well. Gallipoli is still a very big thing here.<\/p>\n The presence of the outback hovers like an eager understudy wherever you go. There\u2019s a feeling the desert could emerge victorious over civilization any time it wanted to.\u00a0 All the fast food restaurants in the world\u2026 and they were well represented\u2026 cannot take you out of that reality.<\/p>\n At its heart, this is why I was here, to see nothing and be nowhere. Alice did not disappoint. Nowhere was everywhere, and the heart of it was only five hours away.<\/p>\n These are three books I really enjoyed while researching this portion of The Palette Project <\/a>\u00a0documentary and web series.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>