27 October 2011 - G’Day Mate Tourist Park, Alice Springs, Northern Territory

Once more we suffered the invasion of insects, and once more were forced to retire earlier than we would have otherwise chosen. Apart from that however, our roadside camp was excellent, shared just by one other. We headed off after breakfast to complete the last 95 kilometre leg of our 1,100 kilometre journey from Mt Isa to Alice Springs.

We stopped at a marker denoting the highest point on the route north to south, and were bemused to find no advice as to what that altitude might be. Later we found it to be 727.2 metres above sea level.

As we neared Alice Springs, there was less evidence of burning and we were surprised how green everything was. Chris was particularly surprised at how high and lush the growth was. He was sure that thirty nine years ago, the vegetation had been no more than a metre high. I told him that trees do grow and that much time had passed. Again we later learned that the area has had two very good years of rain hence the comparative lushness.

We called at the Information Centre and came away with a great pile of brochures and a map which we used to find our way to this park. Outside the Centre we had encountered fellow Lotus owners, who had bought theirs in Woombye as we had. We chatted with Peter and Sheila for a short while and then again found them registering as we entered the park. We ended up parked next to each other and swapped notes on travel and other matters during the course of the day.

Views of Alice Springs from Anzac Hill

We set up and after lunch went back into Alice, the centre being about five kilometres back through the Heavitree Gap, a natural gap in the McDonnell Ranges through which the Todd River might flow sometimes; I find this gap quite beautiful. We drove up Anzac Hill from where we could look over this town of well over 20,000 people, nestled between the surrounding hills, saw the Ghan, the tourist train that runs from Adelaide to Darwin, and generally admired this place which is not, after all, a tin-pot wayside shanty town in the desert.

From there we drove to the Alice Springs Telegraph Station historical reserve, which we wandered around, finding the original spring in the bed of the Todd River, watching euros (hill kangaroos) hop about and then paid the entry fee and spent well over an hour exploring the well restored station. This is of course the genesis of Alice Springs, and was one of twelve repeater stations constructed along the Overland Telegraph Line in the early 1870’s to relay messages between Darwin and Adelaide. The completion of the line heralded a new era in Australia for it enabled fast and direct communication between Britain and her independent colonies.

The station was the first European settlement in the region and originally included the area now covered by the township. One Charles Todd oversaw the construction of the 3,200 kilometre line completed in just two years. To support itself, the Telegraph Station was also a grazing property and at one stage ran 300 head of cattle, 70 horses and a flock of goats.

The Todd River which sometimes runs with water

Remnants of the Alice Springs Telegraph Station

Much later, in the 1930s, the station was home and school to aboriginal children, either taken from their mothers or left there by the same. There are many stories recounting the life of the station and of those who at one time or another called it home. Alec, a fine part aboriginal man of eighty years of age, works there now along with many others, and we were fortunate enough to tag along with a bus load of American tourists and hear him tell of the time he spent there as a little boy and how he was not reconciled with his mother until forty six years later. He also proudly said he was one half Scottish. He, like so many of these children, was the product of a liaison between an irresponsible white man and an aboriginal woman. While these stories pull at the heartstrings and I have met on my travels those whose mother or grandmothers were some of those lost children, I tend to think they were still better off than those we saw about the streets, parks and riverbed today, aimlessly sitting or wandering about with no purpose, no pride, no future.

We have now sorted our issue with the time out; for a few days we were at a loss as to what the time was, having shifted across state borders with differing attitudes toward daylight saving. The Lonely Planet states the following:

Australia is divided into three time zones: the western Standard Time zone (GMT plus eight hours) covers WA, central Standard Time (plus 9 ½ hours) covers NT and SA, and Eastern Standard Time (plus ten hours) covers Tasmania, Victoria, NSW, the ACT and Queensland. There are minor exceptions – Broken Hill (NSW) for instance is on Central Standard Time.

Daylight saving for which clocks are put forward an hour, operates in some states during the warmer months (October to early April), However, things can get pretty confusing, with WA, the NT and Queensland staying on standard time, while Tasmania daylight saving starts a month earlier than SA, Victoria, the ACT and NSW.

From this I ascertained that I needed to put my watch back by half an hour. Chris was not convinced so that was yet another question we put to the volunteer at the Information Centre: what is the correct time? I was right. And so we are now, currently, three and a half hours behind New Zealand.