The Alice

 

by Pa Rock

TV Junkie

I am seventy-six now and have been for almost a month, and one thing I have learned during my seventy-six orbits around the sun is that each passing year goes by a little faster.  I now suspect that my time to travel, especially great distances, is coming to an end, or perhaps it is already over, and my biggest regret on that front is that I never made it south of the equator to see the "Southern Cross."  If I had somehow managed to sail into the Southern Hemisphere, I would have liked to have landed in Australia, the land down under, and spent a few months exploring all that unique continent has to offer.

I would have enjoyed being shuttled through all of the tourist stuff like the Sydney Opera House and the iconic bridge that crosses Sydney Harbor, Bondi Beach, and the Great Barrier Reef, as well as seeing the koala bears, kangaroos, and other unique life forms that inhabit the enormous island continent.

Australia has five cities whose populations exceed a million individuals:  Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide, as well as several others whose residents number in the hundreds of thousands, and I am sure each of those would  be worth a couple of days of exploration, but there is one other, very out of the way Australian community, that has always held my interest:  Alice Springs (in the desert Outback) with a population of around 30,000 hardy souls.  Alice Springs, or "The Alice" as some of the locals refer to it, is in the Northern Territory and far removed from the tourist meccas of the south.  It is not a standard stop on many tourist itineraries.

I became aware of Alice Springs - whose population totals about two-and-a-half times that of the small Missouri city near which I reside - through a couple of college geography courses, but did not have a feel for the town or the rugged terrain in which it is ensconced until I saw the film "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," in the late 1990's.  In that movie three drag queens - two gay males and one transgendered female - drive south to north across Australia from Sydney to Alice Springs - in a large pink tourbus, and have several colorful misadventures along the way.   It was filmed on location with much of the action taking place in the red desert of the Outback.

Alice Springs had the look and feel of a place that would be very interesting to visit.

A few weeks ago while program surfing on Prime, I came across a 22-episode mini-series that had been filmed in Alice Springs in 2005-2006.  The show was called "The Alice," and it featured a large and very talented cast of Australian actors, none of with whom I was familiar.  So I watched one episode and immediately became hooked.  Last night I finished the series, and I have nothing but high praise for the show, its clever writers, and its many fine actors.

The teaser on "The Alice's" IMDB page on the internet reads:  "The show follows the lives of the locals, wrapped in the mystical veil of Aboriginal legends."  It is a comedy, of sorts, with strong dramatic undertones.  The characters are quirky without becoming tiresomely so, and the settings are reminiscent of the rough edges of small town America fifty years or so ago.  There are plenty of dirt roads and lots of local color including a bar where quite a bit of the action takes place, local versions of basketball and football, a camel race, love triangles, an omni-present ghost who only one of the characters can see, and even a pair of tour guides who, as they explain the unique town and area attractions to the tourists on the show, are also educating the viewing public at home.

If you feel restless and confined, but are getting too old to travel, "The Alice" might be just the break you need.  It even offers a couple of nice views of the "Southern Cross!"