Our round the world trip (8): Alice Springs

We left Melbourne on Wednesday (Day 9 of our holiday) as the heat wave started to break and preparations built up for Sunday’s Formula One race. We took a Qantas flight north-west 1,858 kms (1,162 miles) to Alice Springs in “the red centre” of the country. It was a flight of about two and a half hours, but Alice Springs is an hour an half behind Melbourne, so we landed at 11 am local time.

We drove the short distance into the outback town for everyone to find their choice of lunch. Alice Springs is named after Alice Todd, the wife of the British engineer Charles Todd (of which more information shortly), although she never managed to visit the place. It is located on the Todd River which is usually totally dry. Today it has a population of 28,000, including many Aborigines, and lots of local shops display Aboriginal art work. The people of Alice Springs and area are proud of the local facilities, but Roger & Vee felt a sense of isolation not experienced since our visit to the Golan Heights on a trip to Israel.

Before checking into our hotel, we spent the afternoon visiting three local locations, under a cloudless azure sky and with a temperature of up to 38C/100F.

The first stop was at the School of the Air. Founded in 1951, this was the first of what are now 16 such schools which originally provided lessons to pupils in remote locations through radio and now support classes through the the Internet and web cams operated over satellite. The Alice Springs school has three studios and 12 teachers and the 130 students are aged 4-14 and live anything up to 1500 km away.

Next stop was an outback cattle station called Bond Springs. The site was first settled by two Englishmen in 1878 and is now owned and run by the Heaslip family. Some 3,500 Hereford beef cattle are reared here, but we did not see one because they are spread over the huge station of some 1,500 sq km. Laura Heaslip showed us some of original buildings and then offered us tea and coffee in her large kitchen with its own Aga stove.

Finally we visited the Alice Springs Telegraph Station and saw it as it would have looked between 1895 and 1905. Our guide Manuela explained the story of how the British engineer Charles Todd had supervised the construction of Australia’s first telegraph line in 1871-1872 which linked Port Darwin on the north coast with Adelaide on the south coast and in turn Australia with Britain for the first time.

Late afternoon, we checked in to the Chifley Hotel where the group had dinner together. Roger chose pumpkin & lemon myrtle soup, oven baked mustard Parmesan crusted barramundi fish, and banana Mars bar with chocolate ganache & Macadamia ice cream (so sweet and so yummy).

Off next to Ayers Rock …


 




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