Blog 19 Alice Springs 21-22 March 2-19

We left Melbourne early in the morning for our flight to Alice Springs.  The first leg of our trip was a short hop over to Adelaide where we changed planes for the 2 ½ hour flight to the outback.  From the air you could see the scenery change from the green hills of South Australia to the red barren soil of the outback.  Once we arrived our bags were loaded on the bus and we were off to visit the Old Telegraph Station and have lunch (the bus drive would deliver our bags to our rooms at the DoubleTree Hilton at Alice Springs).

Alice Springs began life as a telegraph station, one of 12 repeater stations between Darwin and Adelaide.  A repeater station was needed to boost the signal as it traveled back and forth across the country.  The telegraph operator would receive the message from the previous repeater station, retype it and send it on its way to the next repeater station.  I wonder how many messages were ever received in their original form – I harken back to an old school game where the first person in line is given a verbal message, and he repeats it to the next person in line and so forth, until the last person in line says the message he received.  Not many times was it the same message that started the exercise!

This station, established in 1871, was the first European settlement in Alice Springs.  Not only did it connect the outback with the north of the country (Darwin), but it also connected Australia with the British Empire.  By 1871, the British had established an overland and underwater telegraph network from England to Darwin and another from Adelaide to New Zealand.  But there was nothing across Australia.  A message sent back to England by boat would take 3-4 months each way.  With the final link between Darwin and Adelaide in place, messages could be sent in as little as 5 hours.

The name Alice Springs came from the first name of the Adelaide telegraph director’s wife and the spring that the surveyor believed he had found when surveying the outback to determine the best locations for the repeater stations.  Why the name Alice was used is a mystery – the director’s wife never traveled to Alice Springs!  And, there was no spring – it was only a small pool of water (from a recent rainfall) near the telegraph station.  So the town received its name from a woman who never traveled there and a spring that wasn’t!

Old Telegraph Station

Inside the Telegraph Office

River Gum Tree - as old as the Station'
where you see them there is water

Stationmaster's Home

Old sandy riverbed - behind the trees-
there is water about 6' below

Beautiful Galahs

The station ceased operations in 1932 when more modern facilities were built in Stuart, a town about 4 miles away and founded during the gold rush era of the mid 1850's.  Eventually these two towns merged, and as Alice Springs was there first, Stuart was changed to Alice Springs.  From 1932 -1942, the facilities at the Old Telegraph Station were used as an education center for part aboriginal children – a program called the Bungalow.  The children had to be evacuated in 1942 as a result of World War II and the site became an army base during that war.  It then became an Aboriginal Reserve until 1963 when many of the Aboriginal people moved to another community near Alice Springs.  In June 1962, the area was proclaimed an historical reserve.

It was an interesting tour, but it was extremely hot and the tiny flies, which this area is noted for, were plentiful, irritating, and downright annoying.  You could not escape them and our fly net headpiece went with the bus to the hotel.  We all got very good at doing the Australian salute – waving your hands in front of your face!  But I did get to see some beautiful pink cockatoos – the galahs.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the ANZAC (Australia New Zealand Army Corps) Memorial to see some great views of the city and the outback.  This hill is a memorial to all the Australian who have served in wars.  During WWI and WWII Australian and New Zealand were combined into one organization lead by the British, thus the name ANZAC.

ANZAC Memorial

Alice Springs and MacDonnell Mt Range

The Ghan was back in town

Part of a mural showing history of the town

Back at the hotel we got settled in and relaxed.  There was nothing else planned for the day, so many of us retreated to the bar for Happy Hour (are you beginning to see how much we love our Happy Hour?) and then had dinner in the hotel restaurant.  Our poor guide Ben had come down with a cold on the last day in Melbourne so he had a very early evening and said he slept about 14 hours.

Friday we left the hotel about 9 AM with an Aborigine guide named Lindsay to visit Simpson Gap.  While on the bus he told us a little about the indigenous people, some of there customs, and their belief in the Dreaming or Dreamtime.  This is a term used to describe some of the important features of the Aboriginal spiritual beliefs and existence.  To the Aboriginals, Dreamtime goes back to the very beginning when the land and the people (the whole world) were created by the Spirits.  The Spirits made the rivers, streams, water holes, land, hills, rocks, plants and animals, and the Aboriginals believe that the Spirits gave them not only their hunting tools, but each tribe its land, their totems, and their Dreaming.  It was the creation and law by which they live.

The Ancestors made particular sites to show the Aboriginal people which places were to be sacred.  The Aboriginals performed ritual ceremonies and customary songs near the sacred sites to please the Ancestral spirits and to keep them alive.  The Aboriginals were a wandering people and the knowledge needed by each succeeding generation to find the sites necessary for them to return, e.g. water holes, were passed down through the song line – stories written in the sand and directions to important sites (like water holes) through marks on stones.  These were like survival maps.

What I found interesting was his comment that the dark skin color of the Aborigines is a recessive gene, while the skin of a white person is dominant.  It takes about 3 generations after a mixed marriage for the aborigine’s dark skin to disappear.  He also said that prior to 1967 (when the Aboriginies were granted citizenship) they were considered part of the Fauna and Flora Act and were treated as animals.  He also said that integration into the Australian society has been very hard for the indigenous people.  Prior to the existence of the Europeans in Australia, the indigenous people lived off the land – eating fruits and the lean meat of the kangaroo.  As a result, their systems have a hard time digesting sugars.  In the last half a century, many of the indigenous people have lived off of welfare and cannot afford to buy and eat the foods that their ancestors had.  Diabetes has become a very big issue for the aborigines.  Suicides, especially in the younger generation, and alcoholism are also issues that the Australian government has yet to come to grips with.  Lindsay was very frank and you could hear the passion in his voice as he spoke about these issues and the lack of support from the government.

When it comes to marriage the Aborigines had developed a very complicated system (at least to us) called skin names.  To prevent incest, as it was forbidden to marry within the family group, each child is allocated a name that would tell him who he could or could not marry.  The simplest explanation is that a child called “A” for example could not marry a “B, C, D, or E.”

Simpson’s Gap is a beautiful gorge cut out of the West MacDonnell Mountain Range by Roe Creek.  Most of the creek is just dry creek bed, but there is a little pool of water in the gap.  There is a colony of Rock Wallabies that live in the rocks near the water.  However the water in the pool is stagnant and the wallabies only like fresh water.  So they dig down into the sand until they reach the water level.  Lindsay also pointed out some of the plants that the Aborgines depend on for food.  There was a fig tree that had little figs on it.  He also showed us a wild orange tree and a passion fruit tree.

Rock Wallaby

Rock Wallaby

Simpson's Gap

Hole dug by wallaby looking for water

Simpson's Gap

Figs on the fig tree

Outback fashion

Don't we look chic!

On the way back into town we passed a jeep leading a camel named Willy.  Willy had recently lost his mate and was lonely.  The man who owns Willy is leaving for Germany in a few weeks and he wanted to make sure that Willy had a good home.  There is a mob of camels near the Alice Springs airport and the man wanted to take Willy there.  However, the first time he tried to walk him there, Willy cried out for his mate and refused too move.  And when a camel decides he does not want to move, he doesn't!  This time the man enlisted some help and finally got Willy moving.  And from where we saw them, they only had about 6 more miles to go.

Willy the camel

After lunch in town we visited the School of the Air, founded in 1951 to educate the children who live in the isolated areas of the outback.  The outback is made up of many large cattle ranches and small indigenous communities that do not have enough children to warrant a regular school.  The Alice Springs School of the Air is the grandmother of the 17 Schools of the Air in Australia.  It is basically a correspondence course that relies a lot on the education of the parents.  To qualify, a child must live 50 kilometers from the nearest school and have someone – either a parent or a hired tutor – who will be available every day to help the student with his/her studies.  When it first started, the lessons were taught over the radio.  However in the early 2000s, the school switched to satellite.  Every student is provided with a computer, satellite dish, printer, and fax machine.  Each class is assigned one teacher, although the upper grades may have several teachers.  They go to school for 6 ½ hours a day (just like normal students) and are in a class with other remote students.    However they may only have an hour lesson with a teacher over the internet.  The rest of the day is spent doing the assigned work from the teacher and from the workbooks that are provided every 2 months to each student.  This is where the tutors come into play.  They must work with the student to make sure they are understanding and completing their assignments.  Three times a year (at the beginning and ending of the school year and a sports week in the middle of the year) the students and their families must travel to Alice Springs to meet with the teachers and to meet with the other students in their class.  The school has students from 4 ½ to about 13 or 14 years of age.  Once they reach the high school level, they must go to a boarding school, if that is what the parents and the student want.  Many of these students will become farmers like their parents and therefore they education stops after they finish the School in the Air.  Those students who do decide to further their education are as capable as those who attended regular schools.  It was quite an interesting tour and a novel idea that allows those children who live a hundred miles from other children to receive a good education and social contact with other children their age.

Air of the School

Hotel's peacock

Back at the hotel, as we walked to the bar, the resident hotel peacock was in full bloom.  We had seen him several times, but never with his tail out.   Peacocks love to kill snakes, so the hotel (and me) are happy to keep him there.

Before dinner we had a lesson in playing the Didgeridoo, a traditional Australian instrument.  Made from tree thin trunks that have been hollowed out by termites, you use your lips to blow into the log.  But you have to blow your lips like you were doing a “raspberry” – something my lips would not do.  But it was funny trying to do it.  Andrew, a professional Didgeridoo performer, was outstanding.  He could play pieces for up to 4-5 minutes without stopping.  In addition to trembling your lips, you also need to know who to breathe and also how to make noises while blowing through your lips.  This was definitely not my instrument, but Andrew could really do it!  What a fun hour.

Andrew and his didgeridoos

Trying our hand at it

This is one instrument I will never master!

Dinner tonight was an Australian grill of chicken, barramundi, steak and kangaroo.  It was very good, but we had to eat outside by the pool and the flies were terrible.  We quickly finished and moved into the bar to continue the party.