Today, we visited the Historic Alice Springs Telegraph Station, the site of the first white settlement (pictured below).
This is the Post and Telegraph Office. In the 1870's the Overland Telegraph was Australia's only communication link, which passed through here, across Asia to London. The Telegraph operator had to tap away using Morse coded messages. Watch now, for my demonstration (pictured below).
It's amazing to think that today we can sit in our air conditioned hotel in Alice Springs, and use the Telstra Broadband wireless network to connect to the internet to maintain this blog, which can be read instantaneously by anyone around the world.
This waterhole was named in 1871 "Alice Springs", after the wife of the Postmaster General.
Louise showing she has the ‘photographer’s eye” with this photograph of the stock yards.
Our next stop was the Old Ghan Museum (pictured above), where we explored an Old Ghan train that used to make the long journey across the arid interior to Alice Springs. It wasn't until 1929 that the railway reached Alice Springs, and after having driven across that harsh country, I could imagine laying the railway track would be pure hell.
The 'Ghan' train is named after the Afghan camel handlers who used to drive the camels, the descendants of which, we nearly drove into yesterday on the Lasseter Highway.
Tomorrow, much to Louise's dismay, we are driving back to Coober Pedy, but she is glad where not staying underground again.
