A Town Called Malice

Australia is a very very big country. The guidebooks and postcards describe it as the biggest island in the world and the only island that is a continent. In order to try and experience exactly how big, I booked myself onto two of the longest train journeys in the country, if not the world. First I went from Sydney to Adelaide on the Indian Pacific (so named because it links those two oceans) then, after a stopover in that elegant, leafy city, I caught the Ghan (shortened from Afghan, the name of the camel train that used to link the red centre of the continent to the sea) to Alice Springs.

I left Sydney at 3pm on Wednesday and arrived at my destination just over 24 hours later. Such a train journey in Europe would take you from Edinburgh to Sicily (or, in some cases, from London to Brighton but let's not be bitter...). The second trip was, at 19 hours, slightly shorter but it's still the equivalent of London to Morocco or thereabouts. In Australia I expected to see different landscapes as I would in Europe but I imagined the culture to be relatively homogeneous. In fact the reverse was the case.

Leaving Sydney we journeyed through the Blue Mountains, their name derived from the haze of blue oil emanating from the eucalyptus trees that cover the slopes. It was a perfect Spring evening and, with the train rocking me backwards and forwards, I tried to capture the wonderful colour combinations as the sun set, resulting in a collection of interesting blurs. Heading west, we quickly left light behind and I woke around five to a completely other place. A flat featureless landscape extended away from us in all directions. This was exactly how I'd imagined it: scrubby bushes covering an endless beach that somehow never reaches the shore. But this particular beach had some rather unusual inhabitants. Dotted amongst the bushes were first red then silver kangaroos, bouncing quickly away from the train. Later a flock of emus waggled their feathery backsides at us, like coy cancan dancers. I was rapt. The fact that it was only 6.30am and the only life visible for the next nine hours would be other passengers and the odd horse still couldn't dispel my excitement.

As we approached Adelaide the train cut through less and less yellow and more and more green. Suddenly we were back on the edge, where desert gives way to market garden, vineyards and mountains. The long long train pulled through suburbs and past sidings, finally emptying out the fifteen carriages in two 'detrainings' (the 'red' kangaroo seats in second place, behind the 'gold' ones). The minibus journey into the city revealed a grid of wide boulevards, lined with wild-west-style saloons and houses (long balconies on the second floor; pillars holding them up; big sash windows and gabled rooves), grand monumental museums as well as the odd high-rise. The grid includes several squares and from the main one, Victoria Square, there is an old Victorian tram that runs to the beach. In 24 minutes I reached Glenelg, the most accessible of many resorts. Seaside in every respect, from the sale of silly hats to fish and chips, it is still, like the beaches in Sydney a peerless example of what Australia seems to excel at: enjoying its beauty without, it seems to me, destroying it in the process. The beach and jetty were beautiful, spotless and not marred by endless development (not yet; there were several new hotels or apartment buildings half-built on one side but most of the existing shops and bars are contained in the street leading away from the beach). Though seagulls pestered for chips, their desperation was evident. The next day I toured museums, one containing the largest collection of Aboriginal artefacts in the world and one detailing the process of migration to Australia. Both respectfully considered how the Aboriginal tribes had been damaged by the arrival of thousands of European settlers and pointed out the ways in which the Australian government had sought to recompense lands lost and recover obliterated histories. They were good museums, earnest, determined and, yes, ashamed.

The next day I caught the train north, towards the centre and Alice Springs, the town that is considered to be the geographical heart of the country and continent. Again the journey was one of moving from green to yellow to red, as the fertile southern beach resort gave way to raw cattle farms. By mid-morning we were surrounded by swathes of red mountains and, despite the fact that we all knew Uluru (once known as Ayers Rock) was a five-hour drive from our destination, we still wondered privately if we could spot it.

As another minibus took me to another hostel, it was evident that Alice Springs was, like Adelaide, on a grid. But there the comparisons end. Small, dwarfed by so much natural beauty that it barely tries to rise above the level of a suburban shopping mall, it squats unhappily in the middle of the continent, thousands of miles from the south in both looks and lifestyle. I went for a walk, having been rather unnerved by a notice in the hostel about a woman getting beaten up late at night as she walked home but inwardly wondering how dangerous can it be? As dangerous as Camden? As Bangkok? Of course not.

It might not be dangerous, at least not for a white woman who is sensible enough to avoid wandering around drunk at 3am, but it's certainly scary. Reminiscent of British new towns, with a few streets huddled around a pedestrianised square, the main difference is that whereas the British version usually sells something useful for residents, here only tourists are well-served, with souvenirs, tours and bars on offer; locals must make do with the supermarkets further out on the grid and a bottleshop (off licence). And whereas in Britain the square and benches would be occupied by disaffected teenagers, here it is the Aborigines who occupy the role of personae non grata . In the space of ten minutes I watched three fights take place: one woman was pushed flat to the ground, another pushed into the middle of the road and outside a church a large group shouted and screamed at each other. I suddenly understood why there were so few people about. Though I knew nothing about the disputes, I was still anxious. Here was a whole other culture, one that exists alongside and yet thousands of miles away, figuratively and literally, from the edges of the country. This was the first time I had seen any Aborigines in Australia, in their country, and I realised that rather than an integrated multicultural society, the ne plus ultra of so many western countries, Australia is in fact relatively segregated. Sydney and Adelaide are gorgeous, wonderful, rich and very white cities. Alice Springs is uninspiring and a large portion of its population, Aborigine, poor and discontented, seems to exist either in conflict with the town or at least beyond its reach. The museum in Adelaide seemed a long way away from a street brawl where an adult woman and man could throw beer crates at each other whilst everyone white moved away.

I have travelled to the middle of a continent and whereas life's a beautiful beach on the edge, full of exhibits detailing past atrocities committed by white emigrants, here in the desert good intentions about Aboriginal ancestors and renaming monuments don't seem much use to their desperate descendants. It's the same earth from Adelaide to Alice, but they're on different planets.