Alice Springs is a quintessential Outback town.
They call it the Alice. Officially, it’s Alice Springs and it’s right smack in the Red Centre of Australia.
From Adelaide in South Australia, you can take the Ghan and go by rail to Alice Springs. You can drive there from the Top End or from South Australia by taking the Stuart Highway. Or you can fly from most major Australian cities. You can even go there, if you wanted to, by camel.
Alice Springs lies in a cleft of the MacDonnell Ranges where the Todd River (when it still lived up to its name) had washed out the edges of the mountains.
Prime tourist destination
The traditional home of the Arrente Aboriginal people, Alice Springs has become a prime tourist destination mainly because of Uluru close by, the Olgas, Kings Canyon, the Valley of the Winds, and because of its genuinely Outback character.
Alice Springs was founded in the 1870s when a telegraph station was built near a water hole of the dry Todd River. The Australian overland telegraph lines were to run north to south right through a town originally named Stuart.
The Todd River took its name from Superintendent of Telegraphs Charles Todd. A spring near the water hole was named after Todd’s wife Alice. Alice Springs turned out to be the more popular name and Stuart became Alice Springs in 1933.
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