ON TO ALICE SPRINGS

The Australian Outback’s Alice Springs

By: Phonix Arrien

So anyway, having survived crocodiles in the north of Australia, then watched the Logies on TV in a pub in a tiny speck of a town called Humpty Doo (seriously), I turned south towards the centre of this vast continent.

There is a town sitting in the very centre of Australia and to visit is to appreciate the resilience and ability of people, animals and plants to adapt to harsh, desert conditions. This town is called Alice Springs - even though the woman it was named after never visited the place and there is no springs anywhere nearby.

You can get to Alice by coach - takes a long time from anywhere; travel on the train, a great trip on the Ghan, named after the Afghans who supplied the great stations with supplies before the railway was built; or you can fly. Or of course you can drive.

Once there the best ways to see the sights is on a ‘get-on-get-off’ bus and my first stop is theTelegraph Station, built in 1872 as a relay for the single telegraph wire that crossed the continent from Adelaide to Darwin. The restored building contains rustic gizmos and gadgets: the ancestors of wireless internet, blackberries and strawberry coloured mobiles.

The town is actually three kilometres south of the Telegraph Station which is next to a waterhole (though hardly a ‘spring’). Alice used to be called Stuart but in 1933 was officially named the more popular title everyone had been calling it anyway: Alice Springs.

Time to tuck into a motel for the night, yawn. More tomorrow.

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