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The word, “spring,” is a relative one. In most contexts the word conjures images of “water bottled at the source” or a picturesque scene of a bubbling brook. But if you were wandering in the central Australian desert in the 1800’s any drinkable water would be a beautiful site and, thereby, deserve the name “spring.” Which is how Alice Springs – more of a pool of water that didn’t happen to have evaporated the year the European explorers found it – got the second half of its name. (Ironically, there is a substantial underground water source in this desert town, probably about 20,000 years old, and very beautiful water it is – no need to buy the bottled stuff.) The other half of the name, Alice, is in honor of Alice Todd, the wife of the Postmaster General of South Australia.

Now, it seems that once water was found in the middle of the desert and a town settled, those industrious Aussies decided to put a telegraph station in. The telegraph was pretty much the Internet of the 1800s. Back then, the 0s and 1s of our binary code were the audible noises created by electrical current turning off and on through a wire and written down as “dots” and “dashes,” each signifying a letter. Unfortunately, the current could travel only so far before running out of, well, current. And the system needed repeater stations – literally a human being who listened to the message and then resent it to the next station. So the Aussies built a telegraph line from Darwin (next issue) in the North to Adelaide in the South and a bunch of repeater stations along the way.  And Darwin was connected to Asia via an underwater cable, and then overland all the way to Europe.  Sadly, the very first message sent from the Alice Springs Telegraph station was to announce that the telegraph stationmaster had died of thirst trying to reach his assignment at Alice Springs but they persevered and connected Australia to the old world - with messages that would come in hours not months.

The station is still there in Alice, restored and set up to tell this amazing story. If you go, you’ll be able to watch the stationmaster tapping out young tourist’s names and hear the dots and dashes in the next room. Definitely worth the trip back in time. Good news is if you are staying at Lasseters, where we were, you can borrow one of the mountain bikes and ride to the station in about 20 minutes, get some good exercise along the way and then walk the grounds.