Brolga Healing Journeys

Before last weekend, I’d never considered a truck to be a thing of beauty.  Sure, I’ve looked on some of the enormous outback road-trains with a sense of awe, or should I say terror, as they loom towards you in an all-engulfing cloud of dust along a rough dirt road.  But the enormous gathering of trucks, old and new, large and small, in Alice Springs for the National Road Transport Hall of Fame re-union changed all that.  I’m now in love with trucks.  I want to be a truck-driver when I grow up!

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Forget all the hype about the Federal Election, there was something far more important and exciting happening today in Australia– the Henley-on-Todd Regatta!  Today marked the 49th consecutive year for this annual event held in Alice Springs.  The Henley-on-Todd is unique among boating regattas in that it is held on the dry, sandy bed of the Todd River.  Indeed, when the river flows, as happened one year, the regatta is cancelled.   After all our rain this year, organisers were nervous in the lead-up to this weekend, especially with rain forecast.  They needn’t have worried – the weather was perfect and the regatta venue suitably sandy and dry.

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We admired the beautiful full moon in the early evening of 26 June 2010, but had no idea that there was to be a partial lunar eclipse, until we received a phone-call from my father in Canberra suggesting we have a look into the night sky.  A lunar eclipse occurs when the earth’s shadow blocks the sun’s rays from striking all or, in the case of a partial eclipse, some of the moon.  As it can only occur when the sun, earth and moon are in full alignment (or close to it), a lunar eclipse only occurs during the full moon.  Around half of the moon was to be in shadow during this eclipse. 

Unfortunately, we missed the start of the partial eclipse, and the first couple of hand-held photos are somewhat blurred.  Once the tripod was set up the photos improved.  I took the first photo at 8.06 PM Australian Central Standard Time (8.36PM Aust Eastern Standard Time) and took the final one of the series at 10.36PM ACST, by which time I was just about frozen solid.

Thanks Mum and Dad for the call!

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Alice Springs comes alive during the cooler winter months, and the annual Finke Desert Race is one of its many attractions.  It is a gruelling event, stretching some 229km from Alice Springs to Apatula Community on the Sunday, then returning to Alice on the Monday of the June long weekend.  The race crosses the Finke River, believed to be the oldest river in the world.  To travel this track at a cautious pace in a 4WD is challenging enough, but to race across it at breakneck speed is mindboggling.  This year the number of motorcycle entrants was limited to 500.  This surprised me, because I thought you’d have trouble finding 100 suicidal maniacs to enter the event, let alone 500!  Seventy or so 4-wheeled entrants also entered the event.  I hesitate to call them cars, as they resembled something you’d more likely see in a Mad Max movie.

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Alice Springs is famous for its Henley-on-Todd Regatta, an annual ‘boating’ event held on the Todd River in the centre of Alice Springs.  Why is it famous?  Well, because the boat races only ever take place on the dry, sandy river bed.  The ‘boats’ are carried across the sand by their crews in a race to the finish.  Indeed, the only time the Regatta has ever been cancelled has been when there has been water in the river!

It was with this image of the Todd River in mind that we arrived in Alice Springs late last year.  Dry river bed, not a drop of water in sight.  We both spoke of how much we would like to see the river flow, but didn’t hold out any hope.  

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