Stranded

Welcome to Alice Springs! Population: not that many, and mostly rocks. This shithole town right at the center of Australia is famous for being the closest island of civilization to Uluru/Ayers' rock, the biggest pebble in the world.

Because of a hiccup in my erratic wandering carefully crafted plan, I am stuck here for a day and a half before traveling to the famous red rock. After visiting a barren old hill the highlights of the town, I find myself in a hostel room with too much time on my hands, time I have spent observing and thinking.

 And you thought your life was miserable

My thoughts were of course fueled by the observations I made of this dusty, windswept, God forsaken place. Not forsaken by all gods, mind you: the town is also famous for having the most powerful thunderstorms in the world.

The town is filled with aborigines, and actually this is the first time since I landed in Australia that I have seen so many. The sight, is far from pleasant. When I travel to a new country, I love to see how the locals are living and therefore I was eager to meet them. I wish such a depressing sight had been concealed from me longer. They are walking sad, bent and hopeless. Their ancestral land invaded and their culture poisoned, they wander in limbo. One of the saddest moments of my trip.

Because the town thrives on tourism, Alice Springs is also filled with 20-somethings on a working holiday visa, enticed there by the prospect of finding a job and make some quick money. Interestingly, talking to them yielded the same impression as with the aborigines: a lost bunch with a gloomy future, who came to Australia in search for a better lifestyle only to face self-doubt and despair on the other side of the world. The fact most of them are German doesn't account for everything.

In his Letters to Lucilius, Seneca describes people running away from place to place - attributing their unease to their location. I now realize how lucky I am to travel for the almost scientific curiosity of what would happen if I did something crazy.

This is the feeling I retain from Alice Springs: a remote place drifting away from the rest of the world, a sun-scorched graveyard for hopes and dreams. On the door of my hostel bathroom, somebody scribbled "Life is dust". As night falls and everybody drinks themselves into oblivion, I am sitting among ghosts.

Shining through a dusty whirlpool.