Deborah's travels: Alice Springs

Our second stop was Alice Springs. I guess that this is an oasis in the very centre of Australia. The McDonell Ranges go 300 km in both directions from here, and Alice Springs itself is in a valley surrounded by the mountains (hills). It gets a bit more rain, so although it’s surrounded by deserts (Tamini, Great Sandy, Simpsons, Gibson and the Great Victoria Desert) it technically isn’t desert. It must have been an important refuge for aborigines before white men came.

In the 1800s (and even today) most of the Australian population were in the southeast. An undersea cable was needed from Indonesia for the telegraph, so overseas communications could be reduced from two months. Darwin, or further east was the obvious landing site for the cable, but then it needed to go overland. As South Australia included the Northern Territory from 1863, they saw that they could gain advantage by having the overland cable. However, no white person had crossed central Australia, and the land was almost totally unexplored. The competition for an overland telegraph was fierce - Victoria financed the Burke and Wills expedition in 1860 (they actually did it but they died), while South Australia offered £2000 reward for the first explorer to cross the centre of the continent. John McDouall Stuart did it in 1862 and came back alive. In the process, he found a spring and a waterhole that he called Alice Springs.

The telegraph line was built in 1871, and the telegraph station was established next to the spring and waterhole. (Katherine, where we were yesterday was also established as a repeater station.)

Tonight we had our dinner at the telegraph station.

The telegraph station became a home for half caste aboriginal children in 1911 when the commonwealth took over the Northern Territory from South Australia. At the time, the government considered that only children whose parents were both aborigines should be treated as aboriginal. The children of a white and an aboriginal were taken away to be assimilated into white society, thus starting or perpetuating what are known as the Stolen Generations.

It later became an army camp during World War Two, and then a mission station where aborigines lived. Recently it was derelict, and it’s been renovated to be a museum showing the history of its usage.

Before that, my off train experience was to see an art gallery in Alice Springs, and go to the top of Anzac Hill, where you have a good view of the town.