Australia So Much to See

Alice Springs 2008.  The Old Telegraph Station museum is to the north of the present Alice Springs, at the site of the original town.  We also gain an insight into the Royal Flying Doctor Service. 

A few kilometres north of the town is the Old Telegraph Station with restored buildings and displays.  The first building in the Alice Springs was built here in 1872 when the station was established to relay messages between Darwin and Adelaide. 

The river was named after Sir Charles Todd, who was superintendent of Telegraphs in South Australia at the time.  The Northern Territory was administered by South Australia until 1911 at which time control of the Territory was taken over by the Commonwealth Government. 

This Telegraph Station operated for sixty years, after which the site served as a school for part Aboriginal children, in an era when children were taken from their families to be educated. 

The town of Alice Springs obtained it current name from a pool which held water for longer because of a rocky background.  It was really a pool, not a spring.  It was named to honour Sir Charles Todd’s wife Alice. 

Originally, the township at the Telegraph Station was known as Alice Springs, and a town being developed further south near Heavitree Gap where the Todd River crosses through the MacDonnell Ranges, was called Stuart.  In 1932 the Post and Telegraph Office was closed and all services removed to the town of Stuart and in 1933 the name of Stuart was changed to Alice Springs.

Rooms in the Stationmaster’s House. 

Old cart

This tree is as old as the Telegraph line, and locally the species is called Red Gum. 

The Shaduf in the Riverbed

The Todd may look dry, but there's lots of good water below. 

The water here is quite close to the surface.  They used what the Afghans called a shaduf to draw the water up.

It was a long pole mounted like a seesaw, with a rope and bucket at one end and a counterweight at the other.  The bucket was lowered by pulling on the rope.  The counterweight pulled it back up again. 

For deeper wells, a horse drawn whip was used. 

Tours are conducted through the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) base in Alice Springs.  From an idea conceived by the Reverend John Flynn of the Inland Mission and in conjunction with pilot Hudson Fysh, an air based medical service in the outback was trialled at Cloncurry in Queensland commencing 1928, and by 1930 it was operating across the nation.  Although the Alice Springs Operations Room is still functional, most of the co-ordination is now done from Port Augusta in South Australia.

Of the fifty one aircraft at twenty seven bases around Australia (as at 2008), three planes are based at Alice Springs.  Current 2011 a total of fifty three aircraft. 

Communications were a problem for the new service, and John Flynn worked in conjunction with Adelaide engineer Alf Traeger. They at first established a system of morse code communications.  Traeger then worked on wireless transceivers, but to generate power, a simple hand cranked generator was required, needing two operators; one for the generator and one for the radio.  He then came up with the idea of a pedal powered generator, and the pedal radio was born. 

Royal Flying Doctor Service

The first aircraft used by the Royal Flying Doctor Service were De Havilland DH50s. 

This model shows this interior of a modern Royal Flying Doctor Service aircraft. 

Until 1951, the School of the Air ulitised the Royal Flying Doctor radio network to link children and their teachers.  Now the internet is the most common form of communication. 

Old medical equipment is on display in the Royal Flying Doctor Service museum. 

Today the Royal Flying Doctor Service offers much more than emergency flights in the outback.  In additional to a 24 hour emergency service, they conduct primary health care clinics in remote sites, offer radio and phone consultations and provide medicine chests. Their communications network was used by people in remote areas, although with modern communications, this role is declining. They also provide inter hospital transfers which are not confined to outback areas, but to all places in Australia where speed is required or distance is too far for road ambulances.    

There are many other museums and galleries in Alice Springs that we did not visit, as we were keen to tour other sights in the area before the weather became too hot.