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Alice Springs in mid-summer gets pretty hot. The sun is directly overhead at midday and casts no shadow. It's a busy town and an important one, as you would imagine with no neighbours for hundreds of miles in any direction (and thousands in some).

My abiding memory of this little town remains the number of Aboriginal people we saw, lurking in the shadows as if living in a parallel world, where no-one else could see them. I know nothing about their plight or the complex history of modern Australia that brought about the Aboriginals' current plight, and I will not make any attempt to analyse the causes or consequences of the existance of this socially separated group. Rather I will stick to our own experiences and emotions during our day in Alice Springs.

Taking a walk into town in the morning, we first saw groups, men and women, young and old, sitting in the shadows of the shopping centre. Mostly without shoes and dressed in old tatty clothes, they kept themselves separate to the main activity of the town. They were not seen in shops or cafes, and this segregation, while seemingly not enforced in any way, appeared absolute. The white inhabitants of Alice Springs seemed to be like those of any other town: running errands, stopping to chat with friends and taking a break for a coffee and a gossip. They inhabited the same space as the Aborigine people, but it was rather like watching a film where a character can see dead people walking among us. I was acutely aware of both sets of people, yet each group lived in total unacknowledgement of the other.

Later in the day, we ventured into the town again for dinner. We had a walk of around 1km, mostly along a quiet road by a dried out river bed. Well before reaching the town we could hear the shouting and screaming coming from the shade of the trees on the other side of the river. Groups of Aborigine men and women were sitting, standing, arguing, and it seemed almost all were drunk. Many swaggered with bottles of what looked like home-brew, and while a few shouted out to us, most ignored us as we passed hurriedly by. As we entered the town we made our way quickly to a restaurant, and later even made the rare step for us of getting a taxi back to the hotel; we did not want to venture out again along that street.

There are very few places in the world where I have felt uneasy about our safety, and I never expected to feel that way in Alice Springs. While I doubt we were in any physical danger, it was certainly not pleasant to be out after dark. We later talked to many Australians we met along the way and related our experiences to some of them. Most expressed sadness, frustration and were at a loss to offer a way forward in what has been a social blemish in Australia's recent history.