In which a River runs Through It, but Not All the Time, and Things are Not Always as they Appear

The first thing you notice about Alice Springs is the flies. They're not the biting black flies you get on a New Hampshire beach, or big muffin-eating houseflies. They're tiny little flies, cute almost, that seemed to have evolved for landing on people's faces. What they're doing there is beyond me. And everybody in Alice says the hundreds of little buggers swarming around are nothing. Wait till summer, they say, noting that it also gets to 45 degrees C (about 120). "But it's a dry heat." My advice, stay out of Alice in January. Also swarming are backpackers, but they stayed away from my face.

Alice Springs, from which the town takes its name, is not really a spring at all. It's a waterhole that goes dry part of the year, but it was enough for an early explorer to decide to base a telegraph station there and name it after the station master's wife, Alice Todd (the suck-up). It's also not really in town. Seems that the town was named Stuart, and had its own post office, also named Stuart. Eventually it was decided to close down the Stuart post office and retain only the Alice Springs one. To avoid confusion, the locals opted to change the name of the town to Alice Springs to match the remaining post office. Wouldn't it have made more sense, I asked the guide, to have renamed the post office and left the town as it was? His reply: Not in Australia, mate.

Through the center of town runs the Todd River (somebody was sucking up again). This is the site of an annual regatta, known affectionately as Henley-on-Todd, after the famous English regatta. It's just like any other boat race, with one added obstacle. For much of the year, the Todd River is actually a long line of sand, with not a drop of water in sight. So what they do is, they cut out the bottom of the boats, and the crew gets in, and they run along the dry river bed like latter-day Fred Flintstones in crew garb. On a couple of occassions, though, an unexpected rainstorm has added water to the river, forcing them to cancel the race. This bestows the distinction of being the world's only regatta to be called on account of water.

With all these contradictions, it's fitting that I spent the evening hanging out with a couple of German-speaking Italians (or Italians speaking German, take your pick). Martin and Armin live in some northern part of Italy, the name of which escapes me, which has been subject to border drift during Europe's many conflicts. Apparently a substantial portion of the population there speaks German as their first language. As the only German I know is "Was ist deine telefonnummer?", it was fortunate that they also spoke English.

Alice is a cute little town, but if you go there, don't expect everything to make sense. And bring your bug spray.