Some of the young faces of Alice Springs. Indigenous students from Yirara College ride to school along the Stuart Highway bike path. Yirara is a boarding school roughly 7km south the Alice centre that caters for indigenous children living otherwise traditional lives in remote communities. 

At the Alice Springs Desert Park nocturnal zoo keeper Jess Maddock feeds a pair of Rufous hare-wallabies (Lagorchestes hirsutus) and a bilby (Macrotis lagotis). 

Alice Springs-based gypsy jazz band, the Red Hot Club, perform in the Todd Mall to an audience enjoying the atmosphere at the Epilogue cafe and restaurant.

Aboriginal artist Holly Nangala-Gallagher works with fine detail on her canvas.   

Sitting in a car park down by the Todd River, which runs through Alice, aboriginal artist Holly Nangala-Gallagher sells her artwork to passing tourists. Her husband Michael Nangala-Gallagher sits with her through the day. 

Tim Rollason is the director of the Araluen Art Centre, one of the focal points for art and culture in Alice Springs. He stands here in in front of a work by one of the area’s most famed indigenous artists, the late Albert Namatjira (1902–1959), in a gallery named after him. Araluen Art Centre incorporates four galleries, a theatre and a cinema. 

Mbantua Gallery is owned and operated by Tim Jennings, who has been at the gallery for more than 25 years. Tim is standing beside a painting by Minnie Pwerle (ca 1910-2006) in his extensive warehouse of indigenous artwork. The late artist hailed from Utopia, a very remote cattle station 300km north-east of Alice Springs that has become well-known for producing a uniquely sucessful body of indigenous art. In 2007, Earth’s Creation by Utopian artist Emily Kngwarreye (ca 1910-1996), set a record for indigenous art when it sold for over a million Australian dollars. 

During the Nature Theatre presentation at the Alice Springs Desert Park, trainer and presenter Kristal Margrie feeds an Australian barn owl (Tyto alba). Barn owls usually hunt small mammals and geckos at night, then regurgitate the bones, fur and skin as sticky pellets.

Kristal Margrie shows visitors some of the animals you’re most likely to see while travelling the Red Centre during the daily Nature Theatre presentation at the Alice Springs Desert Park. The park is 1300ha educational facitlity that showcases a variety of Red Centre environments. 

John and Helen Burdekin look for birdlife on a walk around the park Alice Springs Desert Park. Alice has plenty to offer for birders and there are more than a dozen recommended bird watching sites in and around the town. 

Suburban Alice nestles into the base of the ancient rolling hills of the ‘East Macs’, which stretch toward Mt John Valley and Mt Undoolya.

A pair of dingoes (Canis lupus dingo) relax in the winter sun at the Alice Springs Desert Park. Australia’s wild dog is common across Australia except pastoral areas where they have been encouraged to move on. 

Open day at the Alice Springs Gliding Club, where Simon Hatfield inspects his aircraft before takeoff. Except for wind-noise, you can silently glide over the area’s ranges in one of these sleek machines. 

Viewed from the top of West Gap, the last rays of light fall across the houses of the roughly 25,000-strong population of iconic outback town, Alice Springs. Find the full story on Alice Springs in the Jan/Feb issue of Australian Geographic (AG 124).

At the Alice Springs Hospital eye clinic, ophthalmologist Dr Katja Ullrich checks the results of Edith Hanlon’s recent cataract surgery. Cataracts is the principal cause of blindness worldwide. Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders are also about six times more likely to go blind than other Australians, and 94 per cent of this is considered treatable. 

Ruth Elvin is president of the Alice Springs Art Foundation. The foundation organises a presigious yearly national art prize, the Alice Prize, a competition is now over 40 years old. 

Interstate visitors wander through the interpretive centre at the historic Alice Springs Telegraph Station, roughly 4km north of Alice. The telegraph station was the first seed of the Alice township. It relayed messages from Darwin to Adelaide, often from a underwater cable to England. This was the first real regular communication of this type with Europe. 

Late at night groups of predominately indigenous women and children gather in a circle on the lawns of Stuart Rotary Park next the Todd River to the south of the town.

Local sculptor and artist Mark Egan’s work can be found dotted around Alice Springs. This one is a letterbox in the form of NRL legend, Mal Meninga. Mal is currently the coach of Queensland’s State of Origin team. 

The Heavitree Gap Outback Resort in Alice backs onto the eastern MacDonnell Ranges and is a popular place to see and feed the local wildlife. Visiting tourist, Sophie Henning, takes a picture of a black-footed rock-wallaby with her iPhone.

On an evening tour known as the Original Outback Bush BBQ, Danny Brennan from Tailormade Tours, serves the steaks to an international tour group.