Ghost town from days gone by...

I apparently misunderstood my AU history, the country was first settled on the coasts about 225 years ago, but it wasn't until the 1860's that any white man had tried to navigate the center of the country. That essentially makes this part of the country like our old west 100 years ago... and as I said in the lad post, there are indigenous people who have only seen their first white man within the last few decades... It is very interesting to learn about the history and what's going on still today. Some of my impressions may be a little slanted to favor the Aboriginals, since they had been here for well over 40,000 years and now "we" (conventional society) is trying to assimilate them into our way of thinking and living... to me there's something really odd about that... anyway...

One of the main industries in AU is cattle production, or at least has been for the last 100+ years. As a result, the northern part of central AU is cattle country, but the major markets are North in Darwin or South in Adelaide (both endpoints on the vertical centerline that bisects the country). In the old days (up until the 1960s) cattle were moved by Drovers on horseback across the country to market, along the established routes (which we are basically following on this trek). Now they are moved on massive "road trains", which are basically tractor trailers with up to 3 trailers... that's something like 60 yards long and can hold up to 400 head of cattle. Luckily, the roads are pretty straight. The first one of these I saw in Alice floored me!!

Along these routes, small road stops cropped up. As I have learned, they started primarily where the pubs did, which also happens to be where the overland telegraph stations were first put up... but between the two, the pub will win out as the seed for a new stop - in Tenant Creek, the wagon with the alcohol broke down 10 miles short of reaching the telegraph office, so the town is where the booze was, not the telegraph office. Since the Drovers are all but gone, some of the stops have dried up. Today we stopped at one Ghost town from the days of cattle drovers, Newcastle Waters. It was in operation from 1930s-1960s and is now a few old abandoned metal buildings...

This is a really rich history that still seems in it's infancy... out here anyway.
It's amazing how important the laying of the telegraph lines through the center of AU, has driven it's civilization and settlement. It makes sense, but the telegraph was laid primarily for political reasons so that AU could communicate directly (sort of) with Britain - the line needed to run from the South to the North, stretch under the ocean to Singapore, then on through Asia & Europe to London. There was a race to mark a path from Adelaide to Darwin and it took 6 exhibition attempts to finally make it... and that was just to mark the path. Not sure how long it took to run the lines, but I was told it took from the 1920s to 1960s to build the railroad!! There are so few people on this continent (2x metro Chicago) that if there isn't a major major need, things don't get done (ie the Gov doesn't fund it). Schools are a whole other story... for another time.

Oh I forgot to mention, yesterday we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, which is the mythical line that designates the separation of the Tropical region on the Southern Hemisphere (Tropic of Cancer is to the North)... so, now it's getting warm : )



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Location:Newcastle Waters, Central Australia