Aussie Survival Guide
The boatless regatta on the waterless river

The Northern Territory is an easygoing place and Aussie humour really takes over at the madcap festivals that are typical of ‘Top End’ life. But this one’s a certifiable beauty.

In 1962, Reg Smith and his mates at the Alice Springs Meteorological Bureau proposed they hold an actual regatta along the lines of the famous Henley Royal Regatta at Henley-on-Thames, a time-honoured and more than somewhat posh regatta first held in 1839. They may also have been inspired by the annual boat race between Cambridge and Oxford University eights, run on the Thames between Putney and Mortlake, since 1829.

Anyway, the Rotary club of Alice Springs took up the idea. The fact that the town’s river, the Todd, was rarely troubled by flowing water and that the regatta thus would take place on dry sand wasn’t seen as a handicap to a competitive day’s racing.

The multi-event program attracts many local and international participants who often finish up on international TV news paddling ‘canoes’ with sand shovels or sweating in "land lubber" events like filling empty 44-gallon drums with sand.

If you can survive watching usually sane people running up and down through the deep coarse sand, carrying boats made from beer cans and other unconventional materials, maybe you can enter the next Henley-on-Todd, doubtlessly a pinnacle of world sport!

And absolutely a whole lot of fun.