October 9, 1980
A railway station in the town of Alice Springs in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT) was officially opened. This station replaced one that had first gone into service in 1929 as a link in the Central Australia Railway
The present-day station was built as part of a segment spanning 515 miles (828 kilometers) between the towns of Tarcoola in the state of South Australia (SA) and Alice Springs. This segment now forms a portion of the 1,849-mile (2,975-kilometer) transcontinental rail corridor that serves as a connection between the cities of Adelaide, the capital of SA, in the south; and Darwin, the capital of NT, in the north. Construction on the Tarcoola-Alice Springs section of the Adelaide-Darwin railway began in April 1975. With the completion of this segment, the station in Alice Springs became the railway’s new northern terminus.
Princess Alexandra, a member of the British royal family and a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, was among those helping to celebrate the opening of this extension of the Adelaide-Darwin railway on October 9, 1980. She traveled on board a northbound ceremonial train traveling from the station in Tarcoola. When this train was about one mile (1.5 kilometers) south of the Alice Springs station, Princess Alexandra took over the controls of the locomotive for the final stretch of the trip. She subsequently inaugurated the new addition to the railway by snipping a yellow ribbon that was strung across the entrance of the Alice Springs station.
An equally memorable part of this opening day involved four stamp enthusiasts who, as recounted in the next day’s edition of the Sydney Morning Herald, sought “to make a philatelic killing” by rounding up a large number of the pre-stamped envelopes issued to commemorate that historic railway milestone for Australia. These entrepreneurial collectors were Peter McColl, an Adelaide contractor; Karl Moeller, an official with the Department of Agriculture in the state of Victoria; Ivan Smith, a farmer; and Graham Stephens, a property sales manager. They flew in a twin-engined Aerostar light plane to enable them to much more quickly get from one post office to another.
“As the train drew into Alice Springs for the official opening by Princess Alenxandra, the four men were busy in the Tarcoola post office,” reported the Sydney Morning Herald. “In two hours, 1,500 envelopes were postmarked.” The newspaper further noted, “They arrived at the Alice Springs post office 25 minutes ahead of closing time.”
The current version of the Alice Springs station was designed by Adelaide architect Guy Maron. In 2015 – 35 years after the debut of the station – Maron was awarded the Northern Territory Enduring Architecture Award for his work on that structure.
One of the notable features of the Alice Springs station is a sculpture that was created by Gabriel Stark and is on display in the building’s foyer. This artwork commemorates those individuals who used caravans of camels to help transport both passengers and goods throughout that vast region of Australia (known as the Outback) from the 1860s to the 1930s. These cameleers came from various parts of Asia and Africa and were collectively referred to as “Ghans,”
The Ghan is also the name of a tourism-oriented passenger train service that operates on the Adelaide-Darwin railway. The Alice Springs station is among the stations served by these trains on a weekly basis. (Both the Ghan Memorial sculpture and a Ghan train can be seen in the accompanying photo of the station that was taken in 2015.)
The Alice Springs station remained the Adelaide-Darwin railway’s northern terminus until the completion of the final segment of this line. That segment, covering about 882.4 miles (1,420 kilometers) between Alice Springs and Darwin, first went into service in 2004.
Photo Credit: Bahnfrend (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)
For more information on the Alice Springs station, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Springs_railway_station
Additional information on the Adelaide-Darwin railway is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelaide%E2%80%93Darwin_railway_line
Transportation History 
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