In which Layla and Roz find out whether Alice Springs is a 'bonza town' as the book promised

By Layla

Having checked into our little motel, Roz and I stepped out onto the streets of Alice Springs to find out: was the book A Town Like Alice true? Was Alice really a ‘bonza town’? With both of us now re-reading the book which we’ve both loved for years, we were keen to find out.

The town is small and sweet and feels like a frontier town… and it was definitely not bustling on a Sunday night (though we were later to learn that Sunday is one of its most bustling nights!). We had food and drink at a cheery outdoor bar/restaurant called Monte’s (which had an inexplicable but jolly circus vibe), then walked down a dodgy road lined by homeless Aboriginal people, eventually reaching The Dust Bowl, the local bowling alley/karaoke venue. We bowled to the dulcet tones of some of the very worst singers in the history of karaoke (and one good one) before being kicked out at 8:30. According to Alice Springs, it was time for bed. (Side note from Roz: having been required to get up at 5am I was more than content with this.)

The next day, after breakfasting in our room and second-breakfasting in a cool little café called Epilogue (great yoghurt and fruit bowl!), we headed out on a 4km hike to Telegraph Hill, the raison d’etre for Alice Springs. It was the first telegraph station in the region, and part of a thrilling-sounding mission to link the whole of Australia to the UK, cutting communication times from months to hours. It must have felt like magic! The walk was hot and sunny and pretty, along a riverbed that only sees water a couple of times a year. And we were rewarded with an excellent café. It would have been rude not to have some banana bread before our tour of the telegraph station itself. Which was most interesting, and sad: the location was also used to house children with one Aboriginal parent and one white parent, known as the ‘stolen generation’ here.

After the tour we returned to the café for lunch, did a nice little hike through the outback, up Trig Hill, returned to the café for afternoon tea, and then, after essentially eating all the food in the café, returned home to our motel via another fantastic little hike. The scenery around Alice Springs is quite fabulous – they call it the ‘red centre’ of Australia and everywhere is red and dusty, but there’s a lot of vegetation, and some excitingly coloured birds and walking and biking trails everywhere. Such a treat!

But it was clearly time to try the biking aspect… so we hired mountain bikes and sneaked them into our motel room overnight. Our plan was to start early the next day to beat the heat.  (Side note from Roz: why does everyone want me to get up so early on holiday?) We had a lovely evening dining in a restaurant that was helpfully open (as opposed to most others on a Monday, it turned out!) and then at the delightful Alice Springs Cinema seeing The Big Sick which was charming and recommended (despite the unfortunate name…we later spent some time speculating on better names, our best of which was “Coma to Me”).

While we didn’t get up quite as early as planned (side note from Roz: hooray!), by 8:40am we’d had our breakfast, picked up lunchtime quiches, and were on the road. Our destination was Simpson’s Gap, named one of the best bike rides in Australia. Only problem was that it was 48km and I hadn’t been on a bike for ages. Ouch! But it was an amazing ride: beautiful outback scenery, perfect bike path through scrubby vegetation with not a car or another person for miles, and when we finally got to the end, a gap in the big red cliffs offered an unexpected blue water pool – and some rock wallabies for added excitement. We munched what was left of our quiches, and eyed the road home with some trepidation. But powered on by the quiche, and some extra water from a random and potentially dubious drinking water source along the route, and some beautiful scenery, I made it almost back to town before flagging extravagantly. At which point Roz spotted a café and saved the day with lemonade and ice cream. Hooray! That evening after I did a work call, we had delicious veggie burritos and returned to the lovely cinema to see Dunkirk (which I didn’t especially like but enjoyed seeing since it’s the film of the moment) before bedtime.

On our final morning in Alice Springs we walked down to the Olive Pink Botanical Gardens where we had breakfast drinks on a pretty patio, then did a short walk up a hill where we spotted wallabies, before heading back into town for some hipster halloumi sandwiches before it was time to catch our plane. Alice Springs was fantastic. But it’s goodbye to the heat: next stop Sydney!