Indeed, Alice never lived here. The wife of the Postmaster General of South Australia never set foot in the town named after her. Which is somewhat insulting to the man for whom the town was originally named, John McDouall Stuart. For several years in the late 1850s – early 1860s, poor old Stuart shlepped through this harsh, inhospitable, baking oven of a country looking for a way to connect south to north. It took half a dozen attempts, he developed scurvy and went blind in one eye. At one point he was so ill he was carried on a stretcher rigged up between two horses, but he succeeded in his mission to map the route for the telegraph line. A heroic feat, and it would seem reasonable to name the town in his honour. Which they did. At first. Alice Springs was the name of the telegraph station a few miles out of town, and Stuart the name of the town. But it proved confusing. So rather than honour a tenacious explorer, they went with the Postmaster’s wife. And there’s not even a spring.
What there is, however, is a highway named the Stuart Highway. After reading about Stuart is seems churlish to describe the route as extremely long stretches of straight road punctuated by marginal changes of landscape. For a while there’s termite mounds, then there’s none. For a while there’s wide open plains, then there’s a few undulations and some trees. Sometimes there’s roadkill to look at – kangaroos mostly, and then there’ll be a stretch of dead cows – often followed by, or preceded by swerve marks on the road. The advice we receive is don’t swerve, brake as best you can, and come what may.
After what seems like an interminable time we finally arrive in Alice Springs. As expected, it’s hot and dry and, unfortunately, school holidays; the swimming pool is human soup. Thank God for the aircon in the caravan. To do anything we get up early. Yes, before 7.00am. The Desert Park is touted as a major tourist attraction. A desert in a desert you think, how unusual. Yes indeed. Established about 22 years ago, the park represents the three key Australian desert environments: sand, dry desert river beds, and dense woodland. You think desert is desert, but the differences in landscape are remarkable when you really look, and go some way to explain the changes we see along the road. The park has aviaries and enclosures dotted about and we see animals we’ve never heard of before, such as the brush tailed bettong, and in the nocturnal enclosure bilbies, along with ones we never want to see again, like snakes.
The MacDonnell Ranges sweeping out from Alice are stunning – they stretch 644 kms with parallel ridges running east and west of the town, mainly red quartz but also limestone, granite and sandstone. The southern entry to town is through The Gap, a narrow space between the east and west ranges through which the Todd river bed runs. I say river bed, as the last time the Todd river had water in it was about seven years ago.
We follow the West MacDonnells out to the series of gorges on the way west – on our left the ranges run like castle ramparts and on our right it’s flat as an ironing board. The gorge pools are all swimmable, if you don’t mind weed and algae; the levels are low due to lack of rain. We carry on out to Glen Helen, which is a beautiful gorge with a nice swimming pool and glorious red rock walls. We leave the caravan in Alice so we stay in the motel, which is reminiscent of Cell Block B from the outside, and with interior by an Amish decorator. The door had been carefully designed to leave a gap for flying insects to find their way in. The $215 we pay has to be for the view through the extra small windows. Scott expresses some concern that the water in the swimming pool may dissolve his chest hair.
We complete the loop back to Alice by driving south and then east again through Hermannsburg, which is a revelation. It was established in 1877 by German Lutheran missionaries who spied an opportunity to convert the natives. As we know, missionaries can never resist an opportunity to bring Jesus to people who’ve lived for thousands of years in the absence of western religion. Anyway, the two young men chosen to establish the mission must’ve been remarkable as well as zealous. They drove 2,000 sheep, 25 head of cattle and 40 horses the 2,000 kilometres to the Finke River – it took 20 long, difficult months. Long story short, they were quite successful in building relations with the local people, and not only learned the Aranda language, but also recorded it in written form in a grammar and language dictionary. A subsequent Pastor, Strehlow, translated the New Testament into the Aranda language, and wrote a seven volume work on the customs and culture of the Aranda and Loretta people, and this work has provided anthropologists with a valuable resource. Along with the Church, they built a school, cottages, houses, a forge and a tannery to provide employment. All this in one of the most arid areas of the country. The buildings are all still standing in the historic precinct and provide written histories as well as plenty of artefacts for perusal. The work they did is almost enough to forgive them for bringing religion.
Back at Alice Springs, we take a trip out to the Earth Sanctuary Observatory to check out the night sky. So after dinner under the stars, we look through telescopes at Venus, Saturn and the Moon, along with constellations that I can’t recognise even if I squint. But the sunsets and the night sky in the Outback are special, the lack of ambient light making everything in the sky brighter.
And to end on a fun fact for those of you who’ve read the Neville Shute book A Town Like Alice, the town was based on Normanton (remember the Big Barra? Scott doesn’t)
