CAN YOU FIND THE WAY TO SCARBOROUGH BEACH?
Around the early 1870's the first Europeans started venturing into Central Australia, primarily to find a route to those fantastic West Coast beaches ... (all right, not the beaches but they were trying to find a route west). In 1872 Ernest Giles first came to the area and, while heading south-west from Watarrka (Kings Canyon), sighted Kata Tjuta in the distance. As he was trying to get closer to Kata Tjuta he kept running into a giant salt pan which he later named Lake Amadeus.
As much as he kept trying to go around it, the bloody thing kept going. In the end he was far from water, his horses were tired and so he had to turn back. As Giles notes in his writings in 'Australia Twice Traversed', "I named this eminence Mount Olga and the great salt feature which obstructed me Lake Amadeus, in honour of two enlightened royal patrons of science".
RUSSIANS, ITALIANS, GERMANS, SPANISH ... THEY'RE ALL THE SAME!!
There's a few conflicting stories on the subject of 'Amadeus' and 'Olga' being in reference to the King and Queen of Spain. Lake Amadeus was named after the King of Spain, Amadeo I, although he was an Italian. Olga was a Russian that married a German Crown Prince and so became Queen Olga of Württemberg. Bit confusing we know.
I'M SURE THERE'S A TRACK HERE SOMEWHERE
A year after Earnest Giles run in with Lake Amadeus, William Gosse was appointed as a surveyor by the South Australian government to map a route from the newly opened Overland Telegraph Station at Alice Springs, all the way west to Perth (still trying to find a way to the beach). Heading west along the Finke River following in the tracks of Giles, they came to Lake Amadeus and managed to cross the salt pan at its eastern end.
CRIKEY, THAT'S NO HILL ...
As they were traipsing up and down sand dunes, it was Gosse that first spotted Atila (first white fella anyway) and named it Mount Connor, after a South Australian politician. Also from this lookout he spotted another rock formation in the distance which he set off to. As Gosse wrote "When I got clear of the sand hills, and was only two miles distant, and the hill, for the first time coming fairly in view, what was my astonishment to find it was one immense rock rising abruptly from the plain; the holes I had noticed were caused by the water in some places causing immense caves." (very economical with his words).
And so young William Gosse became the first European to climb the Rock, which he did with one of his Afghan camel drivers Khamran. He named the Rock after Sir Henry Ayers, the then Chief Secretary of South Australia.
SHEEP, METAL AND GOD
More and more Europeans started heading into the interior and with the opening of the Overland Telegraph Line in the early 1870's, prompted settlement of what is now Alice Springs. It grew as a direct result of the influx of pastoralists, miners and church missions that sprung up in the region such as the Lutheran Mission at Hermannsburg.
Large parts of the Northern Territory were taken up by pastoralists under pastoral leases issued by the South Australian Government which administered the Northern Territory from 1870 until 1911. Many of the runs taken up were mind bogglingly huge, most running in the thousands of square kilometers (honey, I'll just be down in the bottom paddock ... see you in a couple of weeks). Sheep were initially farmed but they were later replaced by cattle as the main produce as they were hardier.
NOT A GREAT TIME FOR THE LOCALS
As you'd imagine if you happened to be Aboriginal, this was a story of invasion and dispossession of land and water holes that they had used for thousands of years. This led to an uneasy relationship between them and the pastoralists that often ended in violence and the killing of cattle. Strangely enough, it was Aboriginals that became an important part of the pastoral industry as labourers and farm hands until equal wages were introduced in the late 1960's and a little later, aerial mustering. This led to a large drop in numbers from that point.
SORRY BLUE, 1,000 SQUARE KM'S IS JUST TOO SMALL ...
Originally one of the great industries of the Northern Territory, Pastoralism still plays a part today, although much reduced. Pastoralism in the Territory has generally been one of boom and bust due to the holdings being too small and unsustainable, long periods of drought, the great depression, wars, the harsh environment, etc. Many of the runs have been consolidated into even bigger holdings to make them sustainable and large tracts have simply been abandoned. As part of the 1976 land Rights Act, large parcels of land have been returned to the Aborigines with more to come as pastoral leases expire.
