I’ve been through the desert on a bike with no name

I am currently in Alice Springs attending a maths education conference.

Alice Springs is in the “red centre”, the famous arid outback of Australia, with its sandy deserts and ancient rocky ranges. “Middle of nowhere” doesn’t come much more literal than this: the next closest town is over 500km away … and I haven’t heard of it!*

Thanks to the fact that we arrived early I had a bit of free time on Sunday to do some exploring. Consequently I hired a bike from the hotel and, with GPSr at the ready, set off with a plan to discover a few interesting places not too far afield.

Of course, this was only part of the requirement: I also had a preference for finding a cache or two to add to the handful that I had found the previous day with a walk around town.

After a morning detour for a suburban cache and attending the main service of the local Church congregation (the well-equipped cyclist always carries a Sunday skirt in her backpack!), I headed a bit further afield and visited the Telegraph Station reserve.

Actually it should be pointed out that one ventures “further afield” into the Australian desert with caution. In summer it gets seriously hot, the terrain is harsh and disorienting, and some of the animals aren’t particularly friendly, so you need to be sensible. Even though I was only about 4km from the centre of town and the reserve is quite popular, there was still a strong sense of isolation with very few people around the area beyond the main cluster of buildings.

The Telegraph Station was one of the key places for the Overland Telegraph line, which connected Australia with the rest of the world in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The historic buildings have been restored, and the remains of the telegraph line itself are also visible.

The reserve sits on the banks of the Todd River, famous for not having any water (see second photo below at the end of the post). It does flow from time to time after heavy rains, but mostly it is a sandy river bed, home of the “Henley on Todd boat race” in which the bottomless boats are powered by people running.

I went a little way along the Larapinta Trail, which is a famous walking track, and visited the little cemetery shown at the right. It’s a lonely and desolate place to be buried, although it was peaceful enough on the day I was there, and the distant McDonnell Range makes an impressive backdrop.

There were a few caches tucked away in the bush, not far from the tracks. One of these was a bit more remote (relatively speaking) and I enjoyed traversing the associated track behind a rocky hill and back to the river. This is shown in the first photo, in which I am cheating a little because the track is not for cycling … but I had the tune to “I’ve been through the desert on a bike (horse) with no name**” going through my head and so it seemed appropriately silly to set up a suitable photograph.

All in all I had a good day out and about in the wilds not far from Alice.

* This isn’t strictly true, but the ways in which it is false only serve to highlight how truly remote this place is.

** Actually the bike was named #82.