alice springs down under

During my stay at Alice Springs I was able to spend some time exploring the historical site of the old telegraph station. Several tourists were there during my visit- most of whom came to see the historical place where Alice Springs began. The station was set up in 1872 and it linked national communication between Darwin and Adelaide. Maintaining this connection was hard though- the harsh weather and environment of Australia's red center desert interrupted and often caused many technological problems with receiving and sending messages across the land. This is why people come to visit. To see how a station so remote, could function.


Although, I was excited about seeing the station I had read about in books in the states before I came over, I couldn't help but feel a bit unease while I was there. What I found interesting about the station is that it memorializes the original site of European Settlement in desert. In other words, it praises the colonization of the Indigenous populations. The telegraph lines that line Alice Springs (up and down telegraph terrace) up to the original station create cultural interruptions between Indigenous understandings of the landscape and European vision. The telegraph lines thus embody a cultural tension- they dissect and interrupt the traditional indigenous song-lines that inhabited the landscape.

I felt this tension more clearly when I walked around Alice Springs' town center. The young tourists whiz to and from the town in this Hi-Top Caravans to "experience" the desert, while the original owners of the land sit on the sidewalk begging for money. Although, this old telegraph station's history marks part of the beginning of Australia's triumph of the desert and mobility towards better "civilization", it also is a site of much cultural controversy; controversy that I felt just walking the streets of Alice Springs. What do indigenous populations feel about the station's history? Are they happy now that this past technological has evolved to allow them to to have their own cable stations on TV in the desert? Or are they mournful that these lines have dominated their landscape?