Alice Springs Desert Park

The first thing you notice is the long red wall of the ranges behind the park. It rises up against the pale sky, old and quiet and still. The air smells of warm earth and dry, sun-baked plants. A bird calls somewhere ahead of you, and then another one answers it. You have come here to meet the desert. But the desert, it turns out, is already here to greet you.

People sometimes imagine that a desert is an empty place. This park exists to gently show that it is not. Central Alice Springs is full of life, if you have the eyes for it. The plants and the animals here have slowly learned to live with very little water and a great deal of heat. The park gathers them together, out in the open air, so that you can see for yourself how they survive.

The park first opened in 1997. It sits just to the west of Alice Springs, at the very foot of the MacDonnell Ranges. The setting itself is part of the whole experience. You are not standing in a building, looking into glass cases. Instead you are walking out through open country, with the real and ancient ranges rising up behind every exhibit that you pass. The line between the park and the wild is thin.

The park is divided into different habitats. Each one shows you another face of the desert. There is the desert river, where water sometimes runs and the trees grow surprisingly tall. There is the sand country, wide and open and dry. There is the woodland, with its low scattered trees and tough grasses. As you walk slowly from one to the next, you pass from one whole world into another.

In the desert river habitat, look up for the tall trees that quietly follow the hidden water. These are the river red gums. Their roots reach a long way down. Even when the riverbed above looks bone dry, water still waits below the sand. Birds gather in the branches here. The shade beneath is noticeably cooler. In this country, life always clusters close to wherever the water can still be found.

One of the quietest and most special places in the whole park is the nocturnal house. Step inside, and the light slowly fades around you. Your eyes take a while to adjust to the gloom. This clever building turns the night into day and the day into night. That way, the animals who sleep through the fierce heat are wide awake and moving about while you stand quietly and watch them.

Here, if you are lucky, you may see the bilby. It is a small animal with long, delicate ears and a soft gray coat. It digs deep burrows in the sand and comes out only at night to feed. Once, bilbies lived across much of the whole continent of Alice Springs. Now they are sadly far fewer in number. In the warm dark of the house, you can watch one move, close by and unhurried.

Outside once again, the bright light feels almost harsh. Make your way over toward the open space where the bird presentation is held each day. Here the keepers show birds of prey flying in free, open flight. The birds are not held in any cages. They fly right across the open air, sweeping low over the heads of the people who sit watching quietly from the benches below. It is very close.

A wedge-tailed eagle in full flight is a thing you do not soon forget. Its dark wings are remarkably wide. It moves with almost no effort at all, riding the warm air rising off the ground. The keepers talk steadily as the birds fly overhead, telling you how each one hunts and lives out in the wild. For a few short minutes, the wide desert sky seems to belong entirely to the birds.

All throughout the park, the plants are carefully labelled along the trails. Take a moment to stop and read a few of them. Many of these same plants once fed and healed the Aboriginal people who have lived in this country for tens of thousands of years. Every plant has its own use, its own season, and its own story. The desert, you slowly realize, is also a vast pantry and a medicine chest.

The heat out here is very real, and you should always respect it. Bring plenty of water with you. Wear a wide hat. Walk slowly, and rest often. The animals of this country wisely rest through the hottest hours of the day, and there is real wisdom in quietly following their example. Early morning is by far the best time to come, when the air is still cool and the animals are most active.

As you finally leave, turn and look back once more at the ranges. They have stood right here for hundreds of millions of years. The plants and the animals you have seen today are, in the end, the living answer to one very hard question. How do you live, and keep on living, in a dry and ancient land? The desert is not empty after all. It is full to the brim, if you only know how to look.