I put a spell on you

My father told me before I came here that people who relocate to Alice Springs are running away from something. At the time I dismissed this as another of my father's cynical quips. But I realise now that I came here to get away from many things. Whether I was "running" I'm not sure. I prefer the phrase "moving rapidly away from." My flat mate also came here to forget something. Or perhaps "forget" is also the wrong word. To "be healed" of something is more appropriate. So maybe my father was right. Alice Springs is a good place to come to if you wish to put distance between yourself and something in your previous life.

I feel that I have been healed by my time here. When I first arrived I believed that Alice Springs had a magical quality. Some unique spiritual element that bewitched me. Part of it was being surrounded by red rocks dotted with dusty green spinifex, part of it was the ever present sunshine, part of it was the sense of community Alice Springs has. But the largest part of it has been the close friendships I've developed with the three women I moved here with. We all are away from our family and friends and so we became those things for each other.

One of the most healing elements of moving to a new place with new people is that you get to be a new version of yourself. Your history and the well worn trade routes of other relationships do not weigh upon you. You are free to explore a little, to try change, to fail, to be more honest and less afraid. Maybe Alice Springs does possess mystical qualities. Or maybe it was just that the right people were in the right place at the right time.

Kata Tjuta

"In the finished symmetry of its domes it is beautiful at all times; but now the sunset works upon it a miracle of colour, and it glows a luminous blue against an orange field, like some great mosque lit up from within. Five times I saw the sun set beyond Mt Olga but in five hundred times it would not pall. It is the most delicate sight in all the land." H. H. Finlayson 1936.