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Nicole Reardon  "Drought" is a term that most Australians are used to. For people living in one of Australia’s sprawling suburbs, it means their front lawns look less green and their showers are slightly shorter. For people living in rural Australia, the effects of our water shortage have been more devastating.
Nonetheless, the community of Alice Springs has embraced the fact their river has run dry. Heck, they even celebrate it in the annual Henley-on-Todd Regatta. Alice Springs is known as one of the driest regions in Australia and apparently you can’t be declared a local until you’ve seen the local river, the Todd, flow twice. This, I’ve been assured, doesn’t occur often. So I was more than a little confused by the notion of a boat race to be held in a river without any water. Dale McIver, head of promotions for the event and a local participant, sets me straight. “The Henley-on-Todd is a waterless regatta run by the local Rotary clubs,” Dale says. “We race in boats with the bottoms cut and use leg power to propel us along the river bed.” The regatta first began in 1962 when Reg Smith, from the Alice Springs Meteorological Bureau, proposed the zany idea of holding a boat race in the middle of the desert. What started off as a joke suggestion was viewed favourably by the local Rotary clubs, who were looking for an opportunity to raise funds and promote community awareness. “Back in 1962, the event only ran for about an hour and there were only a couple of boats,” says Dale. Now approximately 5,000 people attend every year and around 500 people participate in at least one of the 25 events. While the event draws hundreds of tourists to Alice Springs, the local community is still a rallying force behind the day. More than 100 local Rotarians help organise the event as well as other service clubs and community members who simply help out on the day.  The locals also appear to have the lead when it comes to the Bring Your Own Boat event. Hundreds of spectators look on from under the shady trees on the river bank to view teams who have built their own boats race down the sandy river bank., “Last year the Alice Springs Soccer Mums (pictured), the Royal Flying Doctors’ Service, as well as the local American officers from Pine Gap and our Australian officers from Norforce all had teams competing” says Dale.
How much money, you might ask, can be made from a bunch of spectators watching on as people run down a dry river bank with boats constructed from cardboard, plywood, wire and whatever else is lying around? “We raise about $30k a year, which goes back into the community,” says Dale. “I know they use some of it to support the local retirement home. The club is also giving $15k over three years to a local student here who has been accepted into university to study rocket science.” No doubt that student will one day come back not only with a degree but a design for a rocket-powered boat. In the meantime, the crowd is suitably impressed by the final event of the day where giant battleships take main stage on the river bed, bringing laughter and cheers as they shoot from their cannons water, chicken feed and whatever else the ships’ crews can get their hands on. The only time the crowd has been robbed of watching this event was in 1993 when, to everyone’s surprise, the Todd River was overflowing with water. On that occasion, the locals were just as happy to sit on the river bank, beer in hand, and watch the water flow. The next Henley-on-Todd Regatta will be held 30 August 2008.
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