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On Thu 09/Apr/09 I whipped up to Alice Springs to spend time with my partner Marg. Nice flight - especially as I scored a business class upgrade! I did the airline a favour in agreeing to shift seats, for the comfort of another passenger, & got led up to the pointy end of the plane.
Margaret went up to Alice mid-January 2009 in her capacity as a social worker, to help deliver the Centrelink component of the government’s Aboriginal Intervention strategy. She was here for 3 months, based in Alice, but spending most weeks out at the various Aboriginal communities.
I had managed a rushed visit on the Melbourne Labour Day long weekend but had come up at Easter to spend a week or so of my term break here and then return home with Marg. We had spent time in Alice Springs previously and seen many of the ‘must-see’ places around including some of the West McDonnell Ranges, Kings Canyon & Uluru.
Alice Springs is only a small town. It has a population of only 27,000, its CBD is perhaps only a grid of 4 blocks by 4 blocks, and its skyscrapers now stand at a giddy height
Marg & 'the wheels'
On the road around Alice requires a serious sort of car!of 3-storeys. The population size does swell on weekends when folk from the more remote areas come into town to enjoy the life of a frivolous townie, & maybe replenish foodstuffs or buy fittings for their ongoing lifestyles.
Alice Springs was actually the name given to a waterhole near to the 1871 established Overland Telegraph Line Repeater Station in Central Australia. (Alice was the wife of Charles Todd, the Superintendent of Telegraphs for South Australia.) The settlement grew somewhat in the mid 1880s with the discovery of gold, some 110km east, & the township of
Stuart was proclaimed in 1888. With the completion of construction of the railway from Oodnadatta to Stuart in 1929 the town began to develop & expand. In 1932 the town, now numbering a couple of hundred, was renamed
Alice Springs to avoid confusion between the original telegraph station site and the then current township. During WWII army personnel were stationed at Alice Springs and further development occurred with significant infrastructure, like a new powerhouse, a new aerodrome and water reticulation, put into place.
Alice enjoys a typical arid climate: clear blue skies with an extremely low rainfall. This means long hot summers and short
A lonesome gum
It's tough trying to grow in these hot, dry climes, but you see efforts like this that just inspire! sunny winters with overnight temperatures around zero.
Alice Springs is known to the Arrente people as Mparntwe. Geographically located in the centre of the vast arid zone region of Central Australia, this region spans five deserts and cover more than 4000km2. Presently it is home to more than 20,000 Aboriginal people from more than 12 language groups.
Art has always been part of Aboriginal society and is closely linked to the Altjerre or Jukurrpa, often referred to as the Dreamtime or Creation era. The Jukurrpa is a complex living philosophy, the basis of Aboriginal law and culture, governing all aspects of traditional life.
A workmate of Marg’s, Naomi, had been magnanimous enough to loan us her 4WD car while she was out of town for the long Easter weekend. So, on Fri 10/Apr/09, we drove into the East MacDonnell Ranges, via the Ross Highway, heading to
Trephina Gorge 85km out of town. The Trephina Gorge Nature Park contains two gorges with great walking & hiking trails & some very picturesque scenery. Trephina Gorge itself some very sheer quartzite cliffs & heaps of river red gums, and we were able to trek a rugged rim walk going in &
Trephina Gorge
A view from the base of the cliffs. return via the bottom of the gorge. You get a really good appreciation of the whole layout of the area and how the waters have carved these shapes into the terrain. When we were walking on the sands at the bottom of the cliffs a rather spooky black haze would diffuse away from your foot treads as the tiniest of little insects made way & gave this smoke-like movement. The
John Hayes Rockhole has some very steep and narrow rock walls had some water in it but a little low judging by level lines on the surrounding rocks. We walked a trail to a point above the rockhole where we got a good view of the winding, narrow ravine working its way to the water pool. The colours the rocks and plants reflect are quite vivid but often lost to a large extent by the camera’s automatic ‘adjustments’ to the bright conditions at the time.
Our next stop was just 10km or so further down the Ross Hwy to the
Ross River Resort beyond which the road is no longer sealed. We stopped for an over-priced drink here, at a place that was, and still is, a large cattle
Trephina Gorge
A view from the cliff top trail. station. At some point, though, the owners had erected a dozen or so sheds and henceforth called it a Resort - not quite matching the definition most folk would conjure up when they hear the term!
N’Dhala Gorge is about 90km east of Alice and approached by some unsealed roads. This little spot promised to be pretty spectacular as it features very many petroglyphs (rock carvings) dating back as far as 10,000 years ago. However, our appreciation of this particular site was diminished considerably by the extraordinary number of flies that happened to be also visiting. Up until this point I had always considered those sightseers who wore those beekeeper type hats to be pretty much just wimps -
my opinion has now changed. Marg & I were wearing similar garb - close fitting wrap-around sunglasses, snug bucket-hat that pulled to meet the sunnies & were bespeckled with a bush potion that proclaimed to discourage flying insects. Despite all these points in our favour the flies were relentless and wore us into an early submission.
Marg & I are big walkers and we managed to walk this loop trail from behind Anzac Hill heading north to the old
Team readies itself
Traeger Park Aussie Rules lightning premiership was underway between many of the out-of-town community teams. telegraph station on the east side off the Todd & return walking along the west side - about an hour all up. Alice walks, and those at the various tourist spots out of town, are mostly very interesting - well kept & well signed with info boards and/or trail markers. The geography of the region certainly lends itself to this sort of thing but so many hill outcrops or otherwise unused sites are put to good use with these self-guided trails.
We began our Easter Sunday, 12/Apr/09, with a walk into the
Olive Pink Botanic Garden on the banks of the Todd River for a swish breakfast at the Bean Tree Café. This was a gem of a place that Marg had first discovered on her previous work placement up here in mid-2008 and had since become a regular haunt. (By the way, Olive Muriel Pink (1884-1975) came to Alice Springs in 1930 & was a fierce campaigner for the social justice rights of Aboriginal people.)
After breakfast we did a little more walking, up the hills of the Garden, and then around town a bit before stopping at
Traeger Park. This was a sporting oval which was, today,
Rainbow Valley
This rock formation displays quite a range of colours from dark red (wetter & rusty) to lighter yellows (drier & less iron). The foreground is a (dry) clay basin. hosting an Aussie Rules Lightning Premiership for teams from the various out of town communities.
On Easter Monday, 13/Apr/09, Marg & I still had use of Naomi’s 4WD Suzuki so we set off to check out
Rainbow Valley. Travelling south from Alice down the Stuart Highway for about 80km & then on an unsealed road to the east for about 20km. The Rainbow Valley area is mainly sand dune but features a clay pan in front of a crescent shaped formation that exhibits quite a range of colours from deep reds to almost whites - the colours of which change as the day wears on with the changing amount of light striking the surfaces.
Rather belatedly on Easter Monday afternoon, 13/Apr/09, Margaret & I decided to whip down the road and visit
Desert Park. I had not heard much about this attraction and went there expecting to be under whelmed. Admission here, after our YHA discount, was just $10 each. What a gem this place proved to be! It showcases the natural & cultural environment of arid Australia in three very impressive desert habitats - Desert Rivers, Sand Country & Woodland. You wander along a looped circuit, occasionally
Rugged Looking Tourist
Many of the tourist spots have visitors but not many as ruggedly good-looking as this bloke. playing parts of the supplied audio tour, visiting enclosures here and there that feature the bird life or other natural wildlife. They have a stunning Nocturnal House so you can better appreciate the after dark activity of these habitats. We had only allowed ourselves 2 hours before closing time and we were rushed trying to get around in that timeframe.
On Wed 15/Apr/09, as Marg was working, I thought I’d take the opportunity to indulge myself by taking a $105 Alice Wanderer Day Tour out to
Palm Valley. I was collected at about 0730, the last of 15 passengers to be picked-up, by a now, fully laden, newish and comfortable, tank-like 4WD. Our driver, Jim, had been in ‘Alice since September - September 1952’, and involved in tourism all that time. Jim managed to talk for virtually the entire drive time, which I thought most on board would find pretty hard to take. Personally, I rather enjoyed his mix of fact, anecdote, indigenous culture, historical reminiscences and whatever came to mind.
We drove west for 120km & by around 0900 we were stopping at Hermannsburg for a brief leg-stretch and toilet break, before continuing on to Palm Valley.
Rainbow Valley access roads
Many of the roads are unsealed and feature some very colourful & very soft surfaces. Just outside of Hermannsburg the sealed road ends & dirt tracks take over. We followed the Finke River south into Finke Gorge National Park for the remaining 20km to Palm Valley. We stopped for a tea break at about 1100 at the camp grounds a couple of kilometres short of our goal as there were good facilities including a toilet block. It was from here that the road quality deteriorated from pretty bad to really bad and 4WD was engaged. We all walked through Cycad Gorge, met the bus again, drive the couple of Ks on to Palm Valley. Most here walked for about 30mins into the valley and the dropped a U-turn to come back to the bus. I found, at the turn around point, a staircase that led up to the valley rim and was able to head back along this walk. This provided some great views from the high location into the valley.
Palm Valley is a fascinating relic from millions of years ago when Central Australia was much wetter and more wooded. Thousands of Red Cabbage Palms, which are found nowhere else in the world, cover the area. The drive in has you passing through
Hermannsburg Pottery
Pottery here is typically terracotta painted with bush creatures or tucker & includes an ornate sculpted lid. some vivid ochre coloured sandstone formations called the Amphitheatre, and then through a valley, called Cycad Gorge, chockers with palms and cycads.
By about 1230 we were all back on board and starting our trip back. We had the odd stop or two for toilet break, a trek up to a lookout position. We rattled our way back to Hermannsburg arriving a little after 1400 for a latish lunch.
Coming in to
Hermannsburg, you can’t help but notice those features of many Aboriginal communities - the messiness, numerous car wrecks, damaged & graffitied property. You soon make your way over to its historical precinct. Hermannsburg (or Ntaria to the locals) was one of the early settlements of Central Australia, it was established in 1877 as a Lutheran Mission. It was the place that spawned the Hermannsburg School of watercolour painting with its most noted exponent being the locally born Albert Namatjira. The old mission now features the restored whitewashed German farmhouse-style buildings of old, and functions as a museum, art gallery and tearooms.
Marg & I had visited Hermannsburg on Sat 11/Apr/09, having driven ourselves in Naomi's car, so I had already had a pretty good look around
Hermannsburg Solar Station
This high-tech facility at a low-tech community supplies nearly 50% of the community energy demands. the Mission buildings. (We also discovered they do tremendous sandwiches & an authentic apple strudel.) During this visit we had ventured beyond the Mission buildings to the local store and craft shops were but these we closed and all was quiet at the time.
Hermannsburg is also quite renowned for its handmade and hand painted terracotta pots with sculpted animals, birds and bush tucker perched on their lids.
Hermannsburg Potters, were established in 1990, and currently work out of an unobtrusive and un-inspiring building but produce some fine work, which is greatly sought after on a world-wide basis. I managed to visit their work site to find 3 or 4 women painting away at some large pots while I was allowed to examine some finished material in an adjacent room and cupboard. I was shown some pieces that were valued, on site, from a couple of hundred dollars up to several thousands of dollars - and whose value would double no sooner has it left the premises. An interesting and strange phenomenon as the artists involved here have a deceptive appearance that belies the very special gift or talent they possess. I managed to purchase a modest pot myself
John Hayes Rockhole
Part of the Trephina Gorge Nature Park, accessed by 4WD, is a good spot for a dip. before making my escape back to the Mission.
On our way out of Hermannsburg, Jim drove us to the local Solar Power Station - a set of 8 dishes that track the sun to catch maximum energy. This plant supplies nearly half of the communities power needs.
On Thu 16/Apr/09 I went to visit the
Araluen Cultural Precinct, just across the road from where Marg’s flat is located. The first stop was the Araluen Arts Centre (2-day admission was $10) and included a gallery of indigenous art, a gallery of non-indigenous but Central Australian art, the Albert Namatjira Gallery and a collection of
Otto Tschirn photographs. The Namatjira Gallery was a bit of an eye-opener for me as I didn’t realise the extent of artists amongst Namatjira family or indeed the whole Hermannsburg Art movement. Otto Tschirn was a stockman for the Hermannsburg mission during WWI and took many photographs of that era, 1915 to 1918, when Central Australia was still very much a frontier and gave great insight into the times and its difficulties. Some other parts of the precinct, the Museum of Central Australia & the Strehlow Research Centre were closed undergoing some refurbishment. The Aviation Museum
Desert Park Star
The Desert Park at Alice was a tremendous attraction with great desert habitat info. It also provided good photo opportunities like this! is also in this area as this was the site of the original Alice Springs airstrip and Connellan Airways.
Just a little further down is a cemetery which hosts the graves of Albert Namatjira, Olive Pink, Harold Lasseter and many of the original Cameleers of the Centre. I’m not sure if it’s still in use, although it does seem to have quite a bit of unused (or maybe just unmarked) space available.
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Rhonda Boucher
non-member comment
Albert Namatjira Grave
What a beautiful headstone for one of Australias FINEST man. I have always loved him, even tho i never knew him personally, I only wish I had. I grew up admiring his Ghost Gums, and couldn"t get enough information on him. I taught Aboriginal children at school about him, and Ihope they grow up to enjoy his paintings just as I have. Thank you for putting his burial site on the net to share with us who can"t get there to see it in person. When I found this site it made me a bit sad, as I feel he was a part of me.