Olive Pink

On the eastern edge of Alice Springs one can visit the Olive Pink Botanic Gardens, a stretch of tended desert floor half-surrounded by brown, rocky hills. Early in a pleasantly warm afternoon, after two games of ping pong on the back patio at the house, Rachael and I drove to the Garden and walked up Annie Meyer Hill with a plastic folder in hand, matching numbers to plant names and descriptions: whitewood down at the bottom, witchetty bush all along the way, native fig up high. From the top we could see over the town; beyond, the West MacDonnell Range marched away into the clear sunny distance. At the near end of the range we picked out Euro Ridge and Wallaby Gap, where we had walked and camped our first day on the Larapinta Trail.

At the Garden cafe we sat among bloodwood and tea trees and mint bush and ate toasted cheese and to-mah-to sandwiches. Afterwards we walked the wattle and mallee loops and through the mulga woodland, examining not only fauna but art scattered about the grounds. A large wire emu with a clothes iron for a beak, a woman's figure cut from a car hood and strung with guitar strings.

The Garden was established by Olive Pink herself in 1956, and she had served as its curator until her death, at age 91, in 1975. In the park's first two years she had lived on-site in a canvas wall tent--through the hot season without electricity or running water--and in after years in a tin army shack she called the Home Hut. Olive, local history has it, was a firecracker. She had first come to Central Australia in 1930 to make contact with and study aboriginal people. Subsequently she became a devoted and indefatigable advocate for the aborigines, waging fierce letter writing campaigns and attending, or disrupting, endless meetings on their behalf.

She settled in Alice in the late 1940s and made a bare living by selling cut-flowers from her garden, exhibiting her artwork (mostly botanic), and cleaning the courthouse. She added various civic matters to her repertoire of anger and outrage, and became infamous for her vitriolic letters to the editor and for her confrontations with local officials. Yet, her harridan persona was reserved mainly for officialdom. At her tent and later her hut she entertained many visitors, serving them Bickford lime cordials, cups of tea, or glasses of sherry with madeira cake.

Among the wattle shrubs I spotted an older couple we had met at Redbank Gorge the week before, on the afternoon we finished the Larapinta. When they had appeared at Redbank, in a packed SUV, Rachael had immediately asked if they might give the two of us a ride to Glen Helen. The woman had been taken aback and her first response was querulous. "No, no, we don't have room," she said, shaking her head, but then she'd turned to her husband as he came up. "Gerald, these two want a ride but I think we're too full." Gerald looked skeptical too, but was willing to consider the possibility, and this seemed to influence his wife, at least a bit. "We're going to eat lunch first," she said.

She looked worn down by her Outback experience, her face red and tired, her gray hair lank and untended. But once she'd unpacked their food, and had a couple bites of cheese and wonderful-looking bread (Rachael had commented on the bread, and the woman said, "yes, we need that for the next two days"), she perked up enough to complain about the toilet facilities in the area. "We were out on the Palm Valley Road," she said, "very rough that, and I told him"--she jerked her thumb at Gerald--"that I needed a decent toilet, that I wasn't just going to settle for the Bush. We came to an ancient looking loo out by itself, and Gerald had a look, told me he thought it would do. It did, but just barely." She pinched her nose between forefinger and thumb. "And of course, wouldn't you know it, just another two kilometers down the road we find a brand new facility." She shook her head as if to indicate that this certainly sounded funny, but really it wasn't. In the end, she and Gerald gave in and started moving gear about to make room for one of us. But then we found someone else who would take us both. The change of plans irked the woman, and when I saw her at Olive Pink I said hello but didn't pursue further conversation.

For dinner in the evening Rachael invited some of her friends to the house. Tiff arrived first and told about a home birth she'd attended, as a midwife, the day before. The woman had been in labor for eighteen hours when Tiff arrived at the house. She was nearly fully dilated, and was finding the contractions nearly unbearably excruciating. "If only my fucking back didn't hurt so fucking much," the pregnant woman had said. A second midwife suggested a small subdural injection of water in the lower back, and this had produced miraculous results. The woman's pain disappeared, and she said, "if this is labor, no worries." She delivered a boy an hour later, without need for stitches afterwards. The father was right there for it all, beer in hand.

Rachael made a lovely dinner: a stuffed pumpkin, beans and tomato cooked together in a nice sauce, and a mixed salad. We ate in the dark in the backyard around a fire in the fire pit. A friend's fat black dog, an elderly creature named Luca, looked at me expectantly and I tossed her a piece of vegetarian sausage from the beans. After gobbling up the morsel, the dog sat down next to my wicker chair and commenced a low growl. I thought to myself, a bit rude that, but after a moment I realized the dog was wheezing not growling, simply breathing rather than expressing menace.

Annie appeared with her sister Suzy, another midwife, who had come up from Melbourne for the weekend. They had just returned from two days at Uluru, or "The Rock" as apparently many locals call it.

The last guests to appear were Julie and Mary, both nurses, and their two-year-old son Gregory, an aboriginal child in their long-term foster care. He pointed to the sky and informed us all of stars above. When he saw the fire, though, his allegiance immediately shifted. He sat on Rachael's lap for some time, mesmerized by the flames.

For dessert, Rachael brought out Pavlova, an Australian standard, named at some time in the past for a visiting Russian ballerina. It's a light and airy confection, a meringue of sorts, and is usually served with some sort of topping, a fresh fruit salad on this night. Gorgeous, as they say here when they mean delicious.