The Rock

I liked Alice Springs, but it was when I reached Ayers Rock, or Uluru, that I began to fall in love with Australia’s Red Centre. It wasn’t just the Rock; there was something about the soft, red earth, the wildflowers and wildlife, the air and sky, the emptiness and openness that captivated me. It made [...]

Galahs

The galah (accent on the second syllable) is a species of cockatoo that I saw almost everywhere I went in Australia. They are in fact the most numerous and widespread of Australia’s cockatoos.
Galahs sport rather handsome pink and gray plumage, as you can see below. One may see just a few galahs at a time, [...]

Alice’s Telegraph

The history of Alice Springs really begins with the stringing of telegraph lines from Adelaide to Darwin. Here’s the telegraph station, built near the spring named Alice, that formed the heart of the little community that would begin to grow in this area.

Actually, there’s a fair bit more info about this telegraph station in a [...]

Alice’s Water

The Todd River and Heavitree Gap both took their names from Charles Heavitree Todd, who was Superintendent of Telegraphs and Postmaster General of South Australia at the time this area was being explored. However, the waterhole found at this location got named for Todd’s wife, Alice. Below is a photo of Alice’s “spring.”
This weekend, I [...]

Alice Springs

Coming on the heels of a couple of days of immersing myself in the glorious greenness of the area around Cairns, Alice Springs was a bit of a shock. Not a surprise, mind you, as I’d been expecting an arid place, and not an unpleasant shock, but a shock nonetheless. I had traded green for [...]