Alice Springs 2

8th – 13th June 2012

 

On the morning after our Central Australia tour, I dragged myself out of my cosy bed at the Desert Rose Inn, in the zero degree freezing pre-dawn, and up ANZAC Hill for my last Central Australian sunrise – but I think it was worth it. 

 

ANZAC Hill War Memorial, sunrise.

 

Heavitree Gap, from ANZAC Hill.

 

MacDonnell Ranges, from ANZAC Hill.

 

War Memorial, ANZAC Hill – it’s a bit after sunrise now.

 

I took a walk around the town in the early morning.  This didn’t really help me work out where I actually was.

 

Pedestrian bridge over the Todd “River”.

 

Todd River:

 

 

 

 

 

The Royal Flying Doctor Service, the world's first air ambulance, was founded in 1928 by John Flynn OBE (1880 – 1951).  This building was opened in 1939.

  

John Flynn Memorial Church, Todd Mall.

John Flynn OBE (1880 – 1951), an Australian Presbyterian minister, dreamed of a cathedral within Central Australia where people of all faiths could worship. After his death, his friends across Australia built one in his memory. It was opened in 1956, and its design was a result of a national architectural competition incorporating passive cooling, with local and national symbolism in its design.

 

Built in the 1920s as the Australian Inland Mission hospital, Adelaide House was the first hospital in Central Australia. Designed by the founding flying doctor Reverend John Flynn, it now displays photographs and implements of pioneering medical practice. At the rear of the building stands a small shed housing the original ‘pedal radio’ invented by Alfred Traeger.

 

In the late 1800s the Adelaide to Darwin Overland Telegraph Line was established to bridge the isolation and communication gap between Australian towns and cities as well as Australia with other countries. The Telegraph Station was the first site of European settlement in Alice Springs where it was in service for 60 years before becoming a school for indigenous children.

The station is now part of a historical precinct which consists of a number of telegraph related buildings, some of which have been restored.

Until 1933, the town’s official name was Stuart. Alice Springs was the name given to the waterhole that was discovered and named by Government Surveyor W W Mills in March 1871, whilst exploring the MacDonnell Ranges during the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line, after Alice Todd, wife of the Superintendent of Telegraphs, Sir Charles Todd. The Alice Springs Telegraph Station was built adjacent to the waterhole. However, this dual naming created such confusion for administrators in Adelaide that in 1933 the township of Stuart was officially gazetted Alice Springs.

 

The Alice Springs School of the Air is a primary aged correspondence school that utilises various communications technologies to have daily contact with students, home tutors and teachers. The first broadcasts were made from the Royal Flying Doctor Base in Alice Springs in 1951.

 

Pub with no beer.

 

Stuart Town Gaol 1909 – 1938.

When this goal was established in 1909, Alice Springs was known as Stuart.  This is one of the oldest buildings in Alice Springs, and is now a museum.

 

Built in 1927 as a government residence, the Residency currently displays history of the region, and is a reminder of Central Australia’s brief administrative independence.

 

I hate to admit it, but this train in the Railway Museum looks very like the one Carol and I travelled on, in 1970, from Port Augusta (just north of Adelaide) to Alice Springs.

In those days, the road between Port Augusta and Alice Springs was more like a bush track, inclined to peter out or be obliterated by the wind, so we thought it safer to put ourselves and the car on the train.

On that trip, we were planning to visit Uluru, but that didn’t happen.  Now, 42 years later, I finally made it.  It was well worth waiting for.