Alice Springs Northern Territory Australia

On Tuesday, January 26, we headed for Alice Springs, where we would spend the next two evenings at the beautiful Doubletree Hotel just outside of town. Our plane was delayed, so we did not have much time for a city tour. We had some free time to eat and shop at the Todd Mall, which is pretty much the center of town. Today is Australia Day, so most of the stores were closed.

Alice Springs is in the center of Australia, in what is called the Northern Territory. The NT extends all the way to the northern coast of Australia. It is the least populated and the largest land area of Australia. However, it does not have enough population to be a state. It was organized as the northern territory of the state of Southern Australia. The Alice Springs area is desert and temperatures are in the 90’s or higher. They have had a lot of rain lately, so it was pretty green and most of the waterways had some water. We have arrived at an unusual time.

We visited four interesting spots in Alice Springs. The Royal Flying Doctor Service was founded almost 100 years ago to use aircraft to bring medical services to communities scattered hundreds of miles apart. They are extremely well organized, using electronic media to diagnose illnesses and airplanes to move people if necessary and to bring services to others.

Telegraph Station

We then went to the Old Telegraph Station. In the 1800’s communication between Australia and the rest of the world took forever. Then the telegraph was invented and Australia needed to get hooked up. There is quite a story to how the underwater cable was laid from India by the British (they thought they had better keep up with this colony since they had already lost one colony – us!) The Aussies had to string lines across the continent to meet the cable and they did manage to do that. The Telegraph Station is the remnants of the buildings they used for the repeater station at Alice Springs and the original site of the city.

The next day we visited the medical center (Western Desert Nganampa Walytja Palyantjaku Tjutaku Aboriginal Corporation – or the Purple House) where they treat the indigenous population who are suffering renal failure and need dialysis. This has become an extremely serious problem and affects many people at a very early age. There are many contributing factors to this problem including poor nutrition, diabetes, low birth weight and underdeveloped kidneys, and genetics. The center is doing many things to help solve and alleviate this problem.

Our last visit was to the Alice Springs School of the Air. This is a program which was started in 1951 to bring education to the children living in remote areas of the Outback with no other access to schooling. It was originally started with a teacher who taught lessons and broadcast them to the students over the radio. There might be one student at home, or several students in a central location. Now, they use the Internet and there is video so all the students in one class can relate to each other during the lesson. It is also extremely well organized and very successful. We were all surprised that this complicated system was only utilized by 140 students!