I thought it was time to bring the Grimm adventures up to date since a number, of interesting things have happened. There is a myth that a black cloud hangs over my head, and sometimes there appears to be something to that. When we were in Alice Springs before, the town experienced severe flooding in 1983 - the worse seen for many years. Perhaps I was also responsible for the 10-inch snowfall in Washington D.C. this past January when we home. Anyway, sure enough, we recently had 204 millimeters (about 8 inches) of rain in 6 hours in the Alice Springs area. One area about 200 km west of town had about 15 inches of rain. The Todd River began to flow and it didn't take long before it was over its banks. At one time, according to a policeman I know, it rose about 2 feet in 45 minutes, and at its worse the water was higher than in 1983. However, since not nearly as much rain fell north of us there wasn't a lot of water flowing downstream into town, so the damage didn't seem to be as bad as in 1983. Those of us who work a straight day shift didn't have to come to work and they brought the shift people in on 4-wheel drive buses. The area has basically dried out, though there are some roads which will be closed until early May. They will probably have to be graded before being opened, because of washouts.
There are still areas where some water remains. I was invited to go along with some friends last weekend when they took one of their dune buggies out for a run. They like to ride around an area just outside of town where there are some large "clay pans." These areas unlike most of the land which is fairly porous, are clay and therefore hold water. There was lots of water in the clay pans turning them into small lakes and a local contingent of scouts were there with kayaks. A couple of large dogs spent a lot of time swimming around chasing the boats, I was allowed to drive the buggy once with one of the guys as passenger. When I headed for a large puddle, he didn't think I'd go through - I did. We got mildly wet after I went through three puddles. Afterwards, he said it was his turn so I had to ride as passenger while he drove. At one point he slid the buggy right into the edge of a clay pan and I got absolutely soaked - it was a ball!
The big recent cultural event in town was the premiere of a musical play, written, directed and performed by local people. "Come Hell or High Water" was a two-act play about life in the Northern Territory. The first act was about setting up a cattle station in central Australia shortly after the turn of the century. The play portrayed the hardships of the outback in those days and the treatment of the aboriginals. It was difficult to decide what the focus of the second act was. The scene was an area in the Top End (near Darwin) during a cyclone (hurricane). The people should have been concerned solely with survival, but were worrying about their gold mine as much as their survival. The music was good, but the content wasn't all that great and the actors were all amateurs. They tried hard, but the play just didn't hold my interest.
Toby is bowling again the year (twice each weekend) and is captain of the school's chess team. I am still on the one and only adult choir in town, which occasionally sings for church service and will sing in an Eisteddfod (performing in front of a music critic) next month. Toby is practicing his guitar to perform in it as well. Dorothy is keeping busy at work. She worried over her review of the play for an entire day; so far she hasn't been criticized for what she wrote.
If you think this letter has rambled on long enough - forget it.
I haven't gotten to Dwight yet and that's the big news. So sit back and relax. As I've written before, Dwight is now the weekend photographer for the newspaper. He mostly photographs the multitude of sports that take place in town on the weekend, but has gotten to photograph other events and people as well. For instance, he has photographed Herbie Hancock, a renowned American musician, Miss Australia, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mrs. Hawke, the prime minister's wife. But the best was yet to come.
John Dunn, the South Pacific representative for Time, Life, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, People and Discovery, along with the head of the Southeast Asian dept of Time, located in Hong Kong, were in Alice Springs to gather material on aboriginals who are illegally squatting on lands in the outback. The material is going into a cover story on the Australian Bicentennial, which is being celebrated this year, in one of the May issues of Time magazine. They called the newspaper office looking for a photographer and the weekday photographer couldn't get away so gave them Dwight's name. They picked him up at 8:45 and drive out to the airport where they got on a 6-seater plane. Along with Dwight, the two guys from Time, and the pilot was a representative from the Central Lands Council (don't ask me what it does.) They flew northwest over the Harts mountain range, the area where Dwight and I go fossicking. Dwight got a bit nervous watching the pilot constantly fiddling with the controls. They flew 40 minutes to utopia where there are a lot of aboriginal settlements. They landed on a dirt strip and Dwight said the pilot was obviously worried about the conditions of the strip due to recent rains, and flew over it four times before he was confident enough to land. The landing was smooth. Two more reps from the Central Land Council met them with' a brand new Toyota Land Cruiser (which costs about 50,000 Australian dollars'). They took pictures at a "matchbox" which is a one-kilometer square plot of land on which an aboriginal is illegally squatting. They met a character called "Quart Pot Corbett," an old aboriginal about 5 feet high who had a family of about 19, not counting the dogs. Dwight said he had a "ghetto blaster" (stereo) about the size of a garbage can. These areas are all "dry" (no alcohol) as well as being dry in the sense that they cannot drill bores (wells) since they are there illegally. So they have to haul in 44-gallon drums of water. Dwight was impressed by the number of, "sacred sites" - areas that the aboriginals have declared sacred for about any reason you can think of. He and the other guys did stop in the utopia store for cokes, and the most memorable thing about the store was the Bill Cosby posters on the walls.
The guys from the Land Council took them out to another area at Ammaroo Station to see, more of these illegal areas. Somewhere along the road they ate their box lunches provided by the Sheraton. I asked Dwight how far it was out to the station. He said he had no idea but it seemed like it took hours (this is all on dirt roads, of course). There were about 100 aboriginals there and Dwight Said they must all have been related because the only family name they, gave was "Morgan." There are teachers out there, and Dwight said you could pick out where they lived because of the high fences around their caravans (house trailers), grass and gardens. The trip back to Alice Springs was uneventful, except for the plane bouncing around there are a lot of 'thermals' in this area which even bounce the commercial airliners around. Dwight took three rolls of pictures and if Time uses any, he will be paid according to what size they print.
OK, that is all of my news for now. Stay tuned for the next exciting episode
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