When the magical worlds of Alice Springs and Prague collided

Writer Tanya Heaslip on swapping life on an Alice Springs station for the fairytale streets of Prague, and the remarkable parallels she found between these two magical worlds.

Tanya was in a pub in London in 1989 when she watched on the television as the Berlin Wall came down.

She was the tail end of a solo backpacking trip, which didn’t quite live up to what she’d imagined it might be as a little girl growing up on a remote cattle station near Alice Springs.

But Tanya booked to go to Berlin the...