Stuart Walk, Spencer Hill Circuit, Alice Springs Telegraph Station Historical Reserve - December 2016

There was certainly a bit of weather about on this walk.

In between downpours of rain on our Central Australian trip last year I headed out to the Alice Springs Telegraph Station to do a walk that I'd never done before. The telegraph station precinct is a great little spot, with a good selection of walks and mountain bike rides, as well as a nice grassy park complete with BBQ's and toilets, and then there is the historic old telegraph station itself which also features a small cafe. I'll crap on a little bit more about the telegraph station in a later post but this post is about a late afternoon walk on the Stuart Walk and Spencer Hill Circuit, a walk on the eastern side of the Todd River.

The walk starts off by crossing the wide sandy bed of the Todd River.

As is pretty standard for me I was leaving it pretty late in the day to do this walk, although instead of my usual excuse of apathy, today there was a (flimsy) reason for walking off into the twilight. You see I think the country around the old telegraph station is best seen with sun low, there are no great natural wonders here, just plenty of red desert scenery and the beautiful desert light that comes at sunset (and sunrise). So setting off from the huge car park it wasn't long before I was snapping away with the camera, although the looming black clouds were a bit of a concern. Crossing the sandy bed of the Todd River I picked up the start the Stuart Track and headed off into the scrub.

The telegraph station picnic area is on the far bank.

These low rocky hills are typical of the country at the telegraph reserve.

A lot of the tracks in the telegraph station precinct are now also shared with mountain bikes and I suspect that a fair bit of this walk has been re aligned to help cater for my fat tyred mates as the track only bore a passing resemblance to what my notes were describing. So long as the country isn't too precipitous I actually don't mind sharing tracks with mountain bike riders, a lot of our walking tracks in Australia seem to be overgrown and unloved and I think the extra traffic helps to keep the tracks up to standard sometimes (I suppose I should mention here that I have skin in the game as I'm also a mountain bike rider). After climbing a steep rocky section the track came to a high point and then turned south, generally climbing gently up a ridge with some of the flash houses on the out skirts of Alice Springs coming into view. 

Mt Gillen in the distance.

For the most part the shared track passes through low witchetty bush.

Twenty minutes or so after turning south the well defined track dropped down to cross a large clay pan and on the far side arrive at a track junction. Left would have taken my into suburbia but I was going right, up a wide valley heading towards the Todd River. The dark clouds that had been stalking me finally caught up with me along here although a bit of rain was fairly welcome as it took the edge of the desert heat a little. After passing through a wide gap in the surrounding hills the Todd River came back into view, I now headed upstream along the east bank, the walking track running between a long long rocky hill on one side and the river on the other. In between showers I got the DSLR out to try and capture the beauty of the ghost gums in the fading light, spotting a tiny rock wallaby I had no hope of photographing it in the low light so you'll just have to google Yellow Footed Rock Wallaby to check out the wildlife. Apart from rock wallaby's this area also has it's fair share of dingoes, probably attracted to the picnic area at the telegraph station I'd say.

The junction on the large clay pan. I'd come in on the track on the right and was heading back towards the Todd River along the left hand route.

The camera makes it seem lighter than it really was.

By the time I met up with my outward route and completed the circuit it was almost dark, not that it mattered much as I just had to recross the sandy bed of the Todd River and head to the car park. Heading back to the hotel it became apparent that I'd dodged a bit of a bullet on this walk, Alice Springs was awash with water, it appears that a lot of the black clouds that I'd been watching had deposited their load in town while I'd been wandering around the hills just out of town. While our visit to Alice Springs on this trip had been wet so far, things went up a notch for the next couple of days and there was a lot of flooding around town, we even had the normally dry Todd River flowing. When I finally get around to posting about the Alice Springs Telegraph Station I'll slot in some shots of the flooding.

The track back upstream along the river is bordered by this long rocky hill on one side and the Todd river on the other.

The Dirt.

I walked 4.9 kilometres and climbed 56 metre on this afternoons ramble. As I mentioned earlier, late afternoon is the go here, not only do the rocks look pretty good in the late afternoon light but the local animal tend to come out once the heat of the day dissipates a bit. The Alice Springs Telegraph Historical Reserve is a few kilometres north of town, with a good bitumen road all the way its accessible to everyone. This walk could all be done on a mountain bike although some of the rocky sections of single track would require a bit of skill.

Relevant Posts.

Bradshaw Walk, Alice Springs Telegraph Station Historical Reserve, 2015.

Trig Hill, Alice Springs Telegraph Station Historical Reserve, 2015.

Larapinta Trail, 2007.

Melbourne to Alice Springs, 2016.

Crossing back over the Todd River at the end of the walk it was basically dark.

The weather would deteriorate a little more over the next couple of days, this was the scene as I approached the car park tonight.