One of the great things about living in Alice Springs is that there is always something interesting going on. This week it's the Alice Desert Festival, and we happened - accidentally! - to catch the opening Street Carnival. Parading down the Todd Street Mall was a cacophony of sound, from the town crier (yes! we still have one of those!) to an Afro-Cuban-style marching band, a troupe of drummers from a local Aboriginal school (the Drum Atweme team) and an enormous, slow-moving musical caterpillar. The group of colourfully decorated bicycles in the picture above formed part of the parade.
We also attended a community forum this week that looked at the devastating issue of violence in Central Australia. The statistics are sobering: if you are an Aboriginal woman in Alice Springs, you are 24 times more likely to experience violence than non-Aboriginal women. The majority of this is family violence inflicted by an intimate partner. Alcohol plays a big part. It's a political hot potato and of grave concern for the wider community - the 250-strong audience can attest to that. I tweeted throughout the forum (have a look at @girlplusbike and #walkinmyshoes) and whilst there was a lot of interesting discussion, I came away wondering, what are the outcomes? Where do we go from here? Read more about the forum here.
And in a funny little moment of observation this week, I witnessed this interaction between our two species of pets. One of our dogs, Missy, was lying down, quietly, on one side of the chicken wire, whilst our three chooks were pecking around on the other, each watching the other with a gentle curiosity.
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