Aputula (formerly Finke until the 1980s) is a remote
Indigenous Australian
Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...
community in the
Northern Territory of Australia
The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Aust ...
. It is south of
Alice Springs and east of
Kulgera
Kulgera is a locality in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is south of Alice Springs and north of the border with South Australia, making it the southernmost permanent settlement in the Northern Territory. It sits on the junction of the ...
roadhouse on the
Stuart Highway
Stuart Highway is a major Australian highway. It runs from Darwin, in the Northern Territory, via Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, to Port Augusta in South Australia; a distance of . Its northern and southern extremities are segments of Aus ...
, near the border with
South Australia
South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...
.
The
Finke River (named after
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
prospector
William Finke
William Finke (1814 or 1815 – 17 January 1864) was a prospector and pastoralist in South Australia, remembered as a sponsor of John McDouall Stuart's exploratory journeys, along with the Chambers brothers.
History
Finke, who may have been bo ...
), which is dry for most of the year except during occasional
flood
A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...
s and is part of the
Lake Eyre basin
The Lake Eyre basin ( ) is a drainage basin that covers just under one-sixth of all Australia. It is the largest endorheic basin in Australia and amongst the largest in the world, covering about , including much of inland Queensland, large porti ...
, passes within a few kilometres of the community.
Location and geography
Aputula is the farthest populated place from the sea in Australia, and therefore the nearest settlement to the geographical centre of the continent.
History
A
railway siding
A siding, in rail terminology, is a low-speed track section distinct from a running line or through route such as a main line, branch line, or spur. It may connect to through track or to other sidings at either end. Sidings often have lighte ...
called Finke Siding was created on the
Central Australia Railway
The former Central Australia Railway, which was built between 1878 and 1929 and closed in 1980, was a 1067 mm narrow gauge railway between Port Augusta and Alice Springs. A standard gauge line duplicated the southern section from Port Aug ...
around 1925. It began as a small working men's camp, where the fettlers (railway workers) lived in concrete buildings without family. The nearest police and postal services were at
Charlotte Waters
Charlotte Waters was a tiny settlement in the Northern Territory of Australia located close to the South Australian border, not far from Aputula. It was known for its telegraph station, the Charlotte Waters Telegraph Station, which became a hu ...
and the district's
cattle yards and railway station were at Rumbalara. Car travellers were rare. Aboriginal people started visiting the siding as soon as it was built. Lower Southern
Arrernte
Arrernte (also spelt Aranda, etc.) is a descriptor related to a group of Aboriginal Australian peoples from Central Australia.
It may refer to:
* Arrernte (area), land controlled by the Arrernte Council (?)
* Arrernte people, Aboriginal Australi ...
and
Luritja people established a camp in the sandhills nearby, trading
dingo scalps,
wild flowers
A wildflower (or wild flower) is a flower that grows in the wild, meaning it was not intentionally seeded or planted. The term implies that the plant probably is neither a hybrid nor a selected cultivar that is in any way different from the w ...
, artefacts and other items for water and food.
A
police station
A police station (sometimes called a "station house" or just "house") is a building which serves to accommodate police officers and other members of staff. These buildings often contain offices and accommodation for personnel and vehicles, ...
was built in the late 1930s, after the Charlotte Waters one closed down and the policemen, trackers, their families and some "aged and infirm" Aboriginal people moved to Finke. Residents petitioned for a postal service in 1938. Aboriginal visitors increased as people from
Ernabella
Pukatja (formerly Ernabella) is an Aboriginal community in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in South Australia, comprising one of the six main communities on "The Lands" (the others being Amata, Pipalyatjara, Fregon/Kaltjiti, ...
came to pick up supplies from the train. During the war years, the Central Australian Railway was the main transport route for thousands of soldiers from the southern states going to war in the
Pacific
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...
, and the siding got its first
repeater
In telecommunications, a repeater is an electronic device that receives a signal and retransmits it. Repeaters are used to extend transmissions so that the signal can cover longer distances or be received on the other side of an obstruction. Som ...
station operator as well as its first privately owned business.
[
After ]World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, local pastoralists convinced the government to move its cattle yards from Rumbalara to Finke because the water quality
Water quality refers to the chemical, physical, and biological characteristics of water based on the standards of its usage. It is most frequently used by reference to a set of standards against which compliance, generally achieved through tr ...
at Finke was much better, and the population was thus boosted. In 1947, the first pub, Finke Hotel, owned by Ted Colson (who had been the first European person to cross the Simpson Desert
The Simpson Desert is a large area of dry, red sandy plain and dunes in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland in central Australia. It is the fourth-largest Australian desert, with an area of .
The desert is underlain by the ...
), was opened. An air strip, which gave access to the Royal Flying Doctor Service
The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), commonly known as the Flying Doctor, is an air medical service in Australia. It is a non-profit organisation that provides emergency and primary health care services for those living in rural, remote an ...
, and race track were built by the Aboriginal residents. In 1949 the government started subsidising the town's water supply, but the 1950s saw a water crisis.[
In 1953, the ]school
A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes comp ...
was opened, and Town of Finke formally proclaimed on 18 August 1955, with town lands made available by auction in October.[
In the 1960s, the Aboriginal population of Finke rose as ]drought
A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...
and government patrols moved nomads off traditional hunting grounds, and there less work on cattle stations owing to changes in the industry. The people lived in wurlies, hunted rabbits and sold artefacts to increasing numbers of train tourists.[
Most of the Europeans left Finke when the railway line was shifted westwards in the late 1970s, following the huge track-damaging floods of 1973 and 1974. The Indigenous population did not move. Instead, with the help of Margaret Bain, a ]Uniting Church
The Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) was founded on 22 June 1977, when most congregations of the Methodist Church of Australasia, about two-thirds of the Presbyterian Church of Australia and almost all the churches of the Congregational Unio ...
missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...
from Ernabella
Pukatja (formerly Ernabella) is an Aboriginal community in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in South Australia, comprising one of the six main communities on "The Lands" (the others being Amata, Pipalyatjara, Fregon/Kaltjiti, ...
, they moved off the sand dunes into houses they built themselves. It was during this time that the town came to be known as Aputula, and transitioned from a European township
A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries.
Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, C ...
to an Aboriginal community.[ The name comes from a place called 'Putula' (an ]Arrernte
Arrernte (also spelt Aranda, etc.) is a descriptor related to a group of Aboriginal Australian peoples from Central Australia.
It may refer to:
* Arrernte (area), land controlled by the Arrernte Council (?)
* Arrernte people, Aboriginal Australi ...
word) near the community, which used to be the site of a water soakage
A soakage, or soak, is a source of water in Australian deserts.
It is called thus because the water generally seeps into the sand, and is stored below, sometimes as part of an ephemeral river or creek.
Aboriginal water source
Soakages were tra ...
, where Arrernte people used to get their water, before the white people and the railway line came to the area.[ It also became a "dry town", after the council bought the pub and Johnny Briscoe, the town's first Aboriginal Health Worker, became the publican and ran it dry before giving away its ]liquor licence
A liquor license (or liquor licence in most forms of Commonwealth English) is a governmentally issued permit to sell, manufacture, store, or otherwise use alcoholic beverages.
Canada
In Canada, liquor licences are issued by the legal authority ...
.[
The Aputula Housing Company, founded in the 1970s, has played an important part in the economy, and was run by local people as well as a group of ]Torres Strait Islanders
Torres Strait Islanders () are the Indigenous Melanesian people of the Torres Strait Islands, which are part of the state of Queensland, Australia. Ethnically distinct from the Aboriginal people of the rest of Australia, they are often groupe ...
who moved inland after the war.[
Several of the old buildings in Aputula, including the old police station, school and railway buildings have been nominated for ]heritage listing
This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and man-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In many ...
by the NT Heritage Council.
Camel police
Finke used to have a police force mounted on camels, possibly "the largest police patrol in the world", and the last police station in the NT to use camels. Aboriginal tracker
Aboriginal trackers were enlisted by Europeans in the years following British colonisation of Australia, to assist them in exploring the Australian landscape. The excellent tracking skills of these Aboriginal Australians were advantageous to set ...
s were an essential part of the patrols, which were often responsible for finding people lost in the bush
"The bush" is a term mostly used in the English vernacular of Australia and New Zealand where it is largely synonymous with '' backwoods'' or ''hinterland'', referring to a natural undeveloped area. The fauna and flora contained within this a ...
. The last camel patrol left Finke in 1953. Trackers were also invaluable in solving crimes such as the Sundown murders
The Sundown murders were the murders of Sally (Thyra) Bowman (43), her daughter Wendy Bowman (14), and family friend Thomas Whelan (22) on Sundown Station in northern South Australia outback in December 1957. The search for their killer was one ...
in 1957. Finke police were also responsible for inspecting stock, registration of births, marriages and deaths, looking after mines, protecting birds and collecting taxes. The policemen's wives ran the post office, and also distributed rations while their husbands were away on patrol and nursed sick people (there were no nurses or doctors in Finke).[
]
Climate and demographics
Aputula holds the record of having the two hottest days ever recorded in the Northern Territory— on 1 and 2 January 1960.
The population of the town in 2016 was 192 people.[ They are ]Pitjantjatjara
The Pitjantjatjara (; or ) are an Aboriginal people of the Central Australian desert near Uluru. They are closely related to the Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra and their languages are, to a large extent, mutually intelligible (all are va ...
, Yankunytjatjara
The Yankunytjatjara people, also written Yankuntjatjarra, Jangkundjara, and other variants, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of South Australia.
Language
Yankunytjatjara is a Western Desert language belonging to the Wati la ...
, Luritja, and Lower Southern Arrernte people. Most of the current inhabitants of Finke are migrants from the Western desert, who acknowledge that they are living on Southern Arrernte soil. The site has never been used as an Aboriginal camping place, even in pre-European times, because of the lack of water.[
]
Notable inhabitants
* Ted Colson (1881–1950), pioneer and pastoralist, is known for being the first European person to cross the Simpson Desert.
* Brownie Doolan (1918–2011), tracker and the last person to speak the Lower Arrernte language
*Tali Tali Pompey
Tali Tali Pompey (about 1945/47 – 16 November 2011) was an Aboriginal artist from central Australia. She had a short career as an artist, beginning only in 2002. During this time, however, her work was taken in by several major public ga ...
(about 1945/47 – 16 November 2011), artist
References
Further reading
* – Se
Territory Stories
for details and citation an
Worldcat entry here
{{authority control
Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory
Towns in the Northern Territory
Arrernte
Pitjantjatjara