Outback Trip: Days Seven and Eight

Photos! Well, actually only one photo. Sorry, there just wasn't much that called for photo-taking.

We spent the morning driving to Alice Springs. Around lunchtime we stopped to look around the historic Hermannsburg Mission. The mission was one of the first of its kind, and was pretty successful in taking in displaced Aborigines in the area. It also produced one of Australia's most famous Aborigines, Albert Namatjira. Most of the old buildings were still intact, and they had lots of old photos taken on the mission. For a tangent about Aboriginal issues, see below the main update.

After tea and scones at the visitor center, we traveled on to Alice Springs. It was the first time we had seen much in the way of civilization since Coober Pedy. We had some time to wander around the outdoor mall area of Alice, and then we headed to the nearby campground where we were spending our last night. The campground even had a pool, albeit small, salty, and populated with several unsettling water-creature-bug-things.

The next morning we visited the famous School of the Air, Australia's largest school (or is it the world's largest? I forget...). Created so that young children at remote stations in the outback could get schooling without leaving home, all classes were originally conducted over radios. These days they've switched to computers with a satellite linkup. We got to watch and listen to a teacher conducting a second grade class (learning about dinosaurs). After that, we ate a delicious brunch at a cafe, and that was it. The trip was over. Except getting back to Adelaide. More about that in the next post...

For now, here's a tangent:

The area around the Hermannsburg Mission at the present day is a lot of public housing for Aborigines. It was kind of a shock driving into the residential area. I mentioned a while ago how clean Australia is - even in Adelaide there's never any litter on the streets. Entering Hermannsburg, all of the sudden the sides of the road are strewn with all kinds of trash. The gas station we stopped at sold gas specially formulated so it couldn't be huffed. The whole place had a destitute air about it. It's pretty easy to tell that Aboriginal issues are still, as Bill Bryson puts it, "Australia's biggest social failing." I was reminded a lot of the Native American projects near our house in Minneapolis. It seems like these cultures are so incompatible with Western life that indigenous people are exceptionally vulnerable to all the corrupting aspects of Western culture.

Up through the first half of the twentieth century, almost everyone (even those sympathetic to the Aborigines) subscribed to the belief that they were a dying race, not likely to make it past this century. Given what they observed happening to Aboriginal communities, it's not really that outrageous of a conclusion to draw. Every time Westerners came into contact with a group of Aborigines, the tribe would almost immediately start showing signs of "degeneration." Western diseases wreaked havoc on them, Western vices like alcohol gripped them especially hard, and Western ideas like land ownership interfered with their traditional way of life. Seeing this cultural implosion, it's not that surprising that anthropologists thought Aborigines would fall completely under the onslaught.

To end on a brighter note, I feel like Australia is at least headed in the right direction. Don't get me wrong, there are still some serious, serious, issues that must be confronted, like the enormous gaps in education, health, family cohesion, and so on. But the progress Australia has made so far makes me hopeful that they will be able to tackle the big problems eventually. There's been an official government apology for what was done to Aborigines in the past. Some tribes have successfully claimed rights to their traditional land (Uluru is a notable example of that). Even just simple things, like the way places are referred to by their Aboriginal names rather than the names the settlers gave them, are a good way to get the general populace supporting the cause. I don't know of anything comparable that the US has done for Native Americans, at least in the Midwest. It seems like Australians have really figured out that this 40,000 year old culture is an amazing thing, and they're doing something to protect it.