Eat Me. Alice IS Wonderland.

In 2001 local queer entrepreneurs Phil Walcott and Kalikamurti Suich decided on a bold undertaking, to develop an Alice Springs link into the lucrative Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festival.

The idea was to integrate a local dance party and associated events with Phil’s Rainbow Connection hosted accomodation to produce a local season of community festivities that would draw national and international tourists and stimulate the development of a queer tourist market in the Centre.

In celebration of that other famous Alice, the festival was christened Alice IS Wonderland.

The program for the inaugural Wonderland kicked off with the SPIN FX Desert Dance Party at Pioneer Park on Saturday March 10, 2001 followed by Recovery Over the Rainbow at the Rainbow Connection on Sunday afternoon.

Monday evening offered drinks at the Alice Springs Resort, while on Tuesday and Wednesday nights first a women’s and then a men’s film night was held at Araluen Cultural Precinct.

As the boys watched their movies on Wednesday night the girls had a Women’s Social Pool Night at the Gap View Hotel. It was expected that everbody would need the night off by Thursday.

On Friday it was drinks at the Alice Springs Resort in the early evening before a women’s cabaret and dance party at Witchetty’s in Araluen.

The week-long festival concluded with a day at the races for those still standing to join the straight folks and attend the St. Patrick’s Day carnival at Pioneer Park.

With such a full schedule and the hope that many Mardi Gras patrons would elect to take their recovery and see the sights of Central Australia together, the desert air was filled with nervous anticipation from the town’s queer community.

A grant of almost $2000 to develop promotional material was provided by the NT Tourist Commission and the Australian Tourist Commission agreed to promote the event. The organisers successfully applied for a small Alice Springs Town Council Araluen Access Grant to defray costs associated with hosting the film nights at the Araluen Centre but, ultimately, did not take it up for commercial reasons.

Although the festival was notionally linked to Sydney’s Mardi Gras there was never any intention to hold a parade. The organisers had also rather astutely decided not to invite local antagonism and only promoted Wonderland amongst the queer communities in Alice, interstate and overseas.

So, it was with some horror that that they learned, just one month out from the event, that the Centralian Advocate had obtained copies of their promotional material and was intending to run a story. All pleas not to throw the spotlight on Alice and frighten the rabbits were dutifully ignored by the media and Phil and Kalika reluctantly agreed to give them some input to try and head off any potential misrepresentation.

That probably would have been fine, had the Advocate not sensed a juicy controversy and fanned the flames by making it their front page story accompanied by a nice photo of three boys in frocks parading down Oxford Street. Although nowhere did they state that a parade was on the cards, the inference was ripe for the making in the minds of Central Australia’s more conservative set.

For a full extract of this story, go to Queers-Of-The-Desert.