Alice Springs may have a population of only 25600, but by Outback standards it's a large city, an oasis of civilization amidst barren landscapes. Actually, the city development is rather recent. In 1933 it only had about 200 inhabitants. The road that links it to Darwin in the north was asphalted during WWII, and the one leading to Port Augusta in the south only in 1987!!
Today it's a rather pleasant place, with decent restaurants and fine galleries of Aboriginal arts.
The Arrernte people, the local Aboriginals, call Alice Springs Mparntwe. Their Dreaming tells about the Altyerrenge, ancestral figures who created the landscape and its features, as well as Arrernte Law. The caterpillar is one of the main ancestral figures who shaped the land around Mparntwe.
The Central Arrernte people are the traditional owners of Alice Springs but since the city became the regional hub of Central Australia it attracted other Aboriginal people from all over the region and well beyond. Speakers of Warlpiri, Warumungu, Kaytetye, Alyawarre, Luritja, Pintupi, Pitjantjatjara, Yangkunytjatjara, Ngaanyatjarra, Pertame, Eastern and Western Arrernte, as well as others from the Region, the Northern Territory and interstate either live here or visit regularly to use the town's services. Aboriginal residents live in the suburbs, on special-purpose leases (or town camps) or further out at Amoonguna to the South and in the small family outstation communities on Aboriginal Lands in surrounding areas. Besides Standard English and the distinctive dialect of Aboriginal English there are many traditional languages still spoken by the residents of Alice Springs who are identified as Indigenous Australians.
The British founded Australia on the principle of terra nullius, i.e. they considered that the land belonged to no-one. Aboriginal society could not organize resistance to colonization in ways that Europeans recognized as warfare thus the land was not seen as being theirs. After WWII the Aborigines became more educated and organized some political movement for land rights. However full citizenship rights were not extended to them until the late 1960's, and major land conflicts are still unresolved. Aboriginal people from the Red Center have had very little time to adapt to the new realities: Aboriginal families were still coming out of the desert, coming into contact with White Australia for the first time as late as the 1960's, with the last family emerging from the Gibson Desert in 1984. This has resulted in serious social and economic problems for indigenous people and with the concentration of Aborigines in Alice Springs (Indigenous population: 3000 i.e.13%) some of those problems are very visible in the streets of the city.
The Desert Park is the main attraction of Alice Springs. Different types of Australian arid landscapes have been reconstituted in its 1,300 hectares, and the park which is home to 120 animals and 320 plants. The nocturnal house is especially impressive: with the relative obscurity, you soon forget about the glass separating you from the animals and feel like you're walking in the bush in the middle of the night!