Alice Springs

When traveling in various transfer vehicles we try to sit behind the driver so we can pester them with questions. They always seem very willing to pass along information. The driver on the airport shuttle into Alice Springs had an extremely heavy Strine accent. There was a lot of repeating involved, but we did manage to communicate.

The time was around noon and Annette asked him if he knew of any afternoon tours of the town. He said that his company did tours as well as shuttle bus services. He pulled out his cell phone, dialed his boss, passed the phone to Annette said, “Here, they’ll set you up.” And so we booked an afternoon tour while traveling to the hotel.

We arrived at our accommodations, the Alice Springs Resort. The terrain and the heat seemed much like a summer day in our home town in Eastern Washington; low hills, rocky landscape, scraggly bushes and temperatures near 40C. This was the view from our room.


The hotel advertises “deluxe rooms on the banks of the Todd River”. What they don’t tell you is that the Todd River only flows about once every three years. When the river does flow, the entire town shuts down and goes to see it. A person is not considered a true local until they have seen the Todd River flow at least three times. The townsfolk do make the best of it. They have annual boats races where the participants run down the dry river bed while carrying a boat.


Despite the dry river, the town does have water from underground sources. One of the local guides told us there is an aquifer that runs from the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, under the sea, and all the way into central Australia.

The afternoon tour bus picked us up at the hotel. The first stop was the top of ANZAC hill which provided an excellent view of the town. ANZAC stands for Australia New Zealand Army Corp. There is a monument to honor the men and women that fought in the great wars.


Alice Springs as viewed from ANZAC Hill.


The next major stop was the old telegraph station and the reason the town of Alice Springs was established. Crews build the original telegraph line starting from Darwin in the north and Adelaide in the south and finally meeting at Alice Springs. The original line was build with wooden poles that were not termite resistant. Eventually, the line was essentially rebuild a second time using more durable poles.


A rather picturesque view of the old telegraph station.


Here we spotted our first kangaroo in the wild.


The tour also included the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the School of the Air and general sites around the town.

Since we were heading into the outback around five thirty the next morning, we made an early night of it and had dinner at the hotel restaurant. They served an absolutely delicious rare kangaroo steak with an outstanding sauce. Kangaroos are rather lean, and taste somewhat like a cross between lamb and venison. It was fun to eat at a real Outback steakhouse!