Alice Springs is one of the best places in Australia to buy Aboriginal art and crafts. You will find no shortage of stuff: linen and canvas paintings, didgeridoos, spears, clapping sticks, coolamons (dishes used by women to carry anything from water to babies), animal carvings, baskets, and jewelry, as well as books, CDs, and all kinds of non-Aboriginal merchandise printed with Aboriginal designs. Prices can soar to many thousands for large canvases by world-renowned painters, but you'll also find plenty of smaller, more affordable works. Major artworks sell unmounted for ease of shipment, which most galleries arrange. Store hours can vary with the seasons and the crowds, so it pays to check ahead.
Papunya Tula Artists, 63 Todd Mall (tel. 08/8952 4731; www.papunyatula.com.au), sells paintings on canvas and linen from Papunya, a settlement 240km (150 miles) northwest of Alice Springs, and work by other artists living in the Western Desert, as far as 700km (434 miles) from Alice Springs.
Gallery Gondwana, 43 Todd Mall (tel. 08/8953 1577), has been selling Aboriginal art in Alice Springs since 1990. It showcases both established and emerging artists, with a changing exhibition program.
