The Red Centre

So I boarded the Ghan. What a nice train! I obviously bought the cheapest ticket, yet I was still treated with respect. The leg room was great, there were showers on the train (yes, my second weird shower of the trip!), we even got a complimentary towel to use. Coffee was only $3.5, which is cheaper than in many other places. Another bonus was a commentary along the way (not that the outback offers many sights, but still).

Overall, the journey was worth its price. Trains are incomparably better than buses and enjoying the landscape while sipping coffee in a cafe was also a joy. Moreover, people were chatty and I actually made some friends on the train. One of them was 80 years old and he told me a terrible story.

When the early settlers decided to colonize the outback, they first ventured to the Red Centre themselves to inspect the landscape. As they were terribly ignorant in the ways of nature, they didn't know how to get water in the arid lands of central Australia. So they caught an Aborigine and kept him locked for two days. In that time he got thirsty enough to start running towards the water source as soon as the settlers released him. All they needed to do was follow the poor man.

Australia is full of stories like that and I am beyond shocked to see how most people respond to them. They start saying how rough the early settlers had it and how brave they were. Brave? Brutally exploiting the natives is being brave?

I am getting sadder each day. I see Aborigines and all I see in their eyes is longing and despair. Maybe even confusion. I feel so guilty towards them,  a real White man syndrome. Which is ironic, because I am a Slav (not many famous colonialists among Slovenians). Still I feel I am an intruder on their land. The land they understand, appreciate and respect as no other. I silently beg forgivness from them, but I know that is not something they need or want. They want their land back and their way of life. The way that is incomprehensible to us, too natural, too far away from the material obsessions we are perpetuating.

Thus I wander the streets of Alice Springs in melancholic mood, wishing people would abandon their self - righteous ways and become infinitely more humble towards not only Aborigines, but the nature herself. But that is only a distant dream... is it not?

Yours truly,
Ajda