History
History is not a remote notion in the Centre. With less than 150 years since the first white man passed through, it’s a cross-cultural cauldron where the recipe is always evolving.
The hospital they didn’t want
With the ever-spreading Alice Springs Hospital near the end of its latest growth spurt, it’s fascinating to learn how ambivalent townspeople were about the idea of a hospital in the first place. As Max Griffiths related in last month’s Doreen Braitling Memorial lecture, some Central Australians actively campaigned against the town’s first hospital, Adelaide Hospital. Fate intervened rather brutally to reveal the value of professional nursing care. Max, who succeeded Fred McKay and John Fly...Read more
Return of the man from Oodnadatta
The unchanging ambience of ever-gracious Adelaide House, some spirited pretending and three co-operative camels assisted time travellers on a journey to meet one of the Centre’s most generous souls in Alice’s annual Heritage Festival this month. It’s a hundred years since Plowman, like many others of his ilk, was persuaded by the legendary John Flynn to work for the Australian Inland Mission, which he did as a volunteer up until 1917. Stationed in Oodnadatta, which was then...Read more
The missionary times: look again, says Strehlow
It’s not hard to see why John Strehlow chose to put the grandmother he never met at the centre of his epic volume The Tale of Frieda Keyser. If the missionaries of Central Australia have been neglected and undervalued by posterity, their wives have been more so, despite the huge sacrifices they often made for the people of the Centre. As I discovered when I caught up with Strehlow recently, he and his book are imbued with a 21st century mission of their own: to address widely-held assumptions ...Read more
On the boundary lines
Walkey-award winning author of King Brown Country – the betrayal of Papunya, Russell Skelton returns to the history of Papunya for an interesting discussion on the early days of the western desert art movement and the role played by the late Geoff Bardon, in last weekend’s Age newspaper. The story relates to the “the most comprehensive exhibition of early Papunya Tula boards ever staged. Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art, at the NGV’s Ian Potter Centre, prese...Read more
Getting history out of Pandora’s box
Aspects of Alice Springs bring out the historian in people: its isolation, its awe-inspiring centrality, the freshness of cross-cultural contact and the sense that anything could happen. It seems as if you can get a handle on how and why we are the way we are, and amateur historians have always been thick on the ground, ready to argue a point with authorities or each other, often in public. Pat Jackson had the daunting job of keeping the historians happy when she became the first manager of the ...Read more
The Tale of Frieda Keysser
John Strehlow’s biography of his grandparents Carl Strehlow and Frieda Keysser is an early Christmas present for lovers of Central Australian history. To be officially launched in Alice Springs next month, The Tale Of Frieda Keysser is an epic yarn centred on the wife of the Hermannsburg missionary and mother of anthropologist Ted Strehow, a story John has been working on since 1994, researching his subjects in dozens of archives in Germany, Australia and the UK). John presents the follo...Read more
Window on the vanished world of H. H. Finlayson
Public talks organised by the National Trust are almost invariably worth bottling. From my encounters with the story of H. H. Finlayson, whose photos can be seen at the Central Australian Museum, I am sure this presentation by Ken Johnson will be an ideal way to spend Sunday afternoon. An early scientist who collected over 2,000 mammal specimens and amassed more than 5,000 photographs is the subject of a free National Trust presentation this Sunday at the Hartley Street School. Hedley Herbert Fi...Read more
Back in the days of half a mall
Prompted by discussion about reopening the northern end of the Todd Mall to traffic, Kim Petersen has unearthed this remarkable film he made in 1982, not long before Todd Street was completely blocked off to cars between Wills and Gregory Terraces. This was such a huge step at the time that the Council originally decided to go with a ‘semi-mall’, with one-way traffic and much wider footpaths. It was before I got here, but I’m told Todd Street was lined with big cedar trees befo...Read more
The Ghost of Araluen, part one.
By Alex Nelson On Wednesday, 27 July 2011, two seemingly unrelated events occurred that – to my mind, at least – illustrates perfectly the peculiarly interconnected and cyclical nature of history in our town. The first of these was the revelation that the cleared site for a major five-storey complex, formerly Melankas, had been placed online for sale. The second was the final decision of the NT Electoral Commission of the redistribution of electoral boundaries, which opted to retain the name...Read more
A town of the age
We like to think we are the generation of the information age, but the inventions that set the path for the development of the world wide web began more a century and a half ago with the development of the five-needle telegraph in 1837. Intra-planetary communications have been a seriously happening thing ever since. Fittingly, the development of Alice Springs — one of the remotest cites in the world — has taken place entirely within the context of this ever-burgeoning communications ...Read more
Where it all began — but when?
For a place so deeply soaked in human story, Alice’s Old Telegraph Station still exudes an atmosphere of peace and serenity. Is it just the location — on the banks of the meandering Todd, with a waterhole nearby, the grassy banks blessed by shady gums and a sense of cool respite even on the hottest summer day? The park-like banks have of course been cultivated for many decades, but the reserve has much more to it. Its spell begins at the top of the hill over the Charles Creek cross...Read more
Where’s Mr Stuart?
By Stuart Traynor Week 17 (22-28 June 1860): The expedition ends at Attack Creek They headed back to Kekwick Ponds at sunrise on 22 June and reached them at 1.30 pm with three of the horses just about done in. While resting at Kekwick Ponds on 23 June the men were approached by some Aboriginal people. Firstly at 1 o’clock came two men who presented them with four possums and a number of small birds and parrots. They seemed fairly frightened at first but then became quite bold and started helpi...Read more
Recent Features
- The hospital they didn't want
- The secret life of white-plumed honeyeaters
- Crime levels not new: police commissioner
- Mandatory treatment plan would cost hundreds of millions
- Misbehavers "not welcome": police commissioner
- That famous Whitegate mob again
- CASA and the zen of tourism
- Return of the man from Oodnadatta
- The memories are always there
- More truancy officers
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