Alice Springs, Simpson's Gap, Uluru/Ayers Rock: North Territory of South Australia, 1863 to 1911
Alice Springs is named after the wife of Charles Todd, who oversaw the 3,200km Darwin-to-Adelaide telegraph project in the 1870s.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
The name Alice Springs is among reminders of the Northern Territory of South Australia as it was called from 1863 to 1911 when it was administered from Adelaide.
Alice Todd, wife of Charles Todd (as in Alice Springs’ Todd River), inspired the name for Alice Springs chosen in 1871 by William Whitfield Mills, sub overseer of the C Section sub section C party of the survey team for Charles (“Without the T I’d be Odd”) Todd’s 3,2000km telegraph line project linking Darwin and Port Augusta – and thus Adelaide.
Another project surveyor Gilbert Rotherdale McMinn named the spectacular Simpson’s Gap near Alice Springs after A. A. Simpson, president of the South Australian branch of the Royal Geographical Society. (Simpson Desert also acknowledges him.) Long before, Simpson’s Gap was “Rungutjirpa” to the Arrente people.
Ayers Rock, named after seven-times 19th Century South Australia premier Henry Ayers, became Ayers Rock/Uluru in 1993 and reversed to Uluru/Ayers Rock in 2002.
South Australia administered the Northern Territory for 48 years from 1863 with a responsible government minister in Adelaide in concert with the government resident in Palmerston (Darwin), supported by a few local departments.
In 1870, the South Australian government, with the help and influence of Charles Todd (astronomer/scientist, with humour that revelled in puns, spoonerisms and riddles) agreed to build a 3200 kilometre telegraph line from Darwin, if the British-Australian Telegraph Company would lay a submarine cable from Java to Darwin. When completed in 1872, Australia, via Adelaide, could speak with the rest of the world.
John Ross, a Scottish-born bushman in his fifties, had to mark out the trail for the line to follow. There had to be enough water and timber and no mountains. Ross followed John McDouall Stuart’s tracks as close as possible but deviated in the MacDonnell Ranges.
Next came the surveyors including William Whitefield Mills who, in March 1871, wrote that he had found a dry riverbed, “with numerous waterholes and springs, the principal of which is the Alice Springs, which I had the honour of naming after Mrs Todd”.
Also in 1871, surveyor Gilbert Rotherdale McMinn found Rungutjirpa, an important spiritual place for the Arrernte people, that went on the map as Simpson’s Gap.