Australia Diary 12 May 2002
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Tennant creek is, or was, a gold mining town. Before that it was a telegraph repeater station. The telegraph operators would go looking around for gold (fossicking) when they were off duty and bored. One day, Frank, a local Aboriginal brought a rock up to the station and asked the 'white fellas', "Is this is what you're looking for?". The rock turned out to contain large quantities of the gold that the men were looking for and the gold rush had started. Australia was going through a major depression at the time, 1932, and people walked from all over the country to get a part of the pie (gold!). Yes, walked. There are stories of people walking from Sydney which is over three thousand kilometres away. It was (in some cases anyway) worth it. There are more millionaires per capita here than any other town in Oz. The commercial mine that was subsequently set up in the town finally closed in 1995. It had been making $1mill/wk for the 65 years that it was open. The town is set up about 7 km from the original telegraph station. Why was it set up so far away from the most logical place to set it up? The answer is simply, booze (alcohol ). A guy (I didn't find out his name) thought that the miners could probably do with a drink. So he packed a load of grog (alcohol ) into a cart and drove it up to Tennant's Creek - only he didn't quite make it. The axle on cart broke 7 km short of the town. Rather than carrying the beer to them, he figured that the miners would come to him if they were thirsty enough. They were, and they did. The pub was established in 1934.

I saw my first red back spider. It was at the campsite. Our guide took quite a shine to it, but was less than impressed when it tried to bite him!

We stopped off at the Devils Marbles (known as Karlwekarlwe or Karlu Karlu in the local languages). They are apparently the Rainbow Serpant's eggs that she left here on her way out of Arnham land.

We also drove through Wycliffe Well. There have been loads of UFO sightings here. There is also a pub that serves over 300 beers - but we wern't allowed to stop there. Apparently the guys on this tour use too much toilet paper?!

We drove south through the Tropic of Capricorn before reaching Alice Springs.

Alice Springs used to be called Stuart's town. Charles Todd had a wife. His wife was called Alice. The local river is named Todd river. This river had springs (well actually holes straight down to the water table). These were 'Alice Springs'. The town had its name changed in 1933 to Alice Springs. Why? Dunno, I wasn't paying attention!

We had a big party at the hostel to celebrate the end of this part of the tour. In to bed at 2...

To tomorrow

Created by Dan Leigh 12/05/02