Alice Springs - telegraph and railroad town

Royal Flying Doctor Service - live map

We had a 2 hour flight from Adelaide to Alice Springs arriving at our hotel a little after 1 PM. After lunch and a little shopping, we visited the Royal Flying Doctor Service Museum. This service provides medical services for most of the center of Australia. A lot of the service is provided by radio or telephone to the remote areas of the country. But the planes are used to provide both routine and emergency services. There are 21 bases with 63 aircraft serving 295,000 patients a year, covering 80% of the country.  The museum had an excellent film providing the history behind the service which started in 1928 as well as examples of the service they provide. The service began in 1928 using DeHavilon QH-50 aircraft and the service used pedal-powered radios to communicate from the remote areas to the bases. Today, they are using Pilatus PC-12’s which cost about 6 million each. 80% of the funding comes from the government and the rest from charitable donations.

Alice Springs exists because it was a telegraph relay station for the transcontinental telegraph. The European history of central Australia start with John McDouall Stuart who after 3 attempts, crossed from South to North across the continent in 1861-62. At the time, it would take four to eight months for a letter to get to London from Australia. Telegraph lines had been strung from London to India. Stuart’s maps were used to lay a telegraph cable from Adelaide to Darwin from 1870 to 1872. Five hundred men were formed into 3 teams (north, south and central) to lay 36,000 telegraph poles at the rate of 30 poles/day. Every 300 km. they needed a telegraph relay station, where they would listen to the message from one side and repeat down the next portion of the line. The lines were extended from India through SE Asia and then a cable was laid under the sea from Java to Darwin. Now a letter could be sent in 3 hours to London, not 3-6 months. Of course, the cost was high $18.75 for 20 words, about 7 weeks of a typical laborer’s pay. The telegraph was powered by 3 sets of 80 copper sulfate batteries, one active, one recharging, and one on standby.

Alice Springs Telegraph Office

In 1932, the train tracks were laid from Adelaide to Alice Springs, or rather 4 miles short of the telegraph office. So the town and the telegraph office were moved to the end of the tracks, where the town is today. The barracks here became home to 130 of the lost generation for the next 10 years. While here, we saw another species of Kangaroo, the Euro, not to be confused with the currency. Since we’re in Central Australia, the birds are different too: we easily Spotted Galahs and Ringnecks.

Spotted Galahs

At the end of the day, we got a chance to throw boomerangs.