We started our Todd River ‘Tour’ at the Telegraph Station, just north of town. The Telegraph Station was built here because it is on the banks of the Todd River and there is a waterhole nearby (which the first European settlers called Alice Springs, although it isn’t a spring and it sometimes dries up!)It’s a good place to start (or finish) a Todd River bushwalk!

The reason for having the Telegraph Station in the first place was so that messages sent along the telegraph line from Adelaide to Darwin could be repeated, and also so the line could be kept in good order. They had similar telegraph stations all along the track. And the Todd River was named after Charles Todd whose idea it was to build the Overland telegraph line in the first place. His wife’s name was Alice, and that’s where Alice Springs gets its name!

When the Telegraph Station was first built, it must have been very surprising for the people and animals who had lived here for thousands of years before we wondered what they must have thought as they looked at the buildings from their hiding spots in the bush!

This is what the waterhole looks like at the moment we haven’t had proper rain for months so its quite dry. Sometimes there’s enough water around the base of this rocky outcrop for us to swim in! People used to think water got trapped in those rocks and then seeped out to fill the waterhole as a spring, but that’s not true.