It was a busy weekend and I have taken a few days to recover from it I must say. I get very tired pretty easily these days. I am trying to rest up but I am also pretty uncomfortable so sleeping isn’t that easy either. It is almost impossible to find a comfortable position.

Anyway the weekend was great none the less. I have mentioned in a few posts of late the racism that exists in this town and that is true but there are also lots of people trying to do different things about it and on the weekend we participated in a few events. Firstly, we attended a forum put on by the Islamic community in Alice Springs at the mosque. It was titled, “getting to know each other” and there were a few speakers who spoke a bit about Islam and culture etc etc but also just a lot of chatting and “getting to know each other”. The community provided wonderful hospitality and food and we felt very welcomed by them. It was also very informative for me and I learned a lot. I was also really pleased at the diversity of the town who showed up and participated.

We also attended an event in honour of it being 51 years since Albert Namatjira’s death at the cultural centre. There were paintings to look at, choirs singing, people telling their stories as well as we got a sneak preview of a few scenes from the Belvoir play Namitjira that will begin in Sydney in September. If you can you should go and see it. I think it will be excellent. Archie Roach was also there and played some songs. However, the nicest things about it again was the diversity of the community that attended. So often it feels like events in Alice are attended by either white fellas or black fellas. Not this though, there were people there from the entire community. It had a really lovely feel to it.