By ERWIN CHLANDA
More than 4000 people – up on last year – came to see the Henley on Todd yesterday, or at least some of it, as the annual event entered its second half century.
It is all about racing boats that have no bottoms (except those belonging to the competitors).
Females don garments that are as gaudy as they are revealing. Normally earnest citizens turn into pirates, sailors, Vikings, drenching each other with hand-held water canons, racing in hamster wheels and bathtubs.
And of course, young and old compete in huge variety of water craft, to some degree similar to the real thing, except they are adapted for use in a creek that has no water in it. This is in contrast to the much more sober event, the Henley-on-Thames, the inspiration for the Central Australian regatta.
All profits (still being calculated) go to charity. The event in Alice is another triumph for local volunteerism.
There are no paid employees.
All work is done by members of the town’s three Rotary Clubs, Apex, Emergency Services and other volunteers, about 100 of them.
It is a red letter day on the tourism calendar but the locals love it, too. A survey of the crowd by the Alice Springs News Online, and covering 91 people, revealed that 61% were locals, 28% were visitors and 10% had come to town especially for the Henley (that makes the total number of visitors 38%).
Numbers in the VIP tent were boosted by 55 riders of red postie bikes from interstate.