what later became Alice Springs, thereby establishing a route from the south of the continent to the north.
A European settlement was started ten years later with the construction of a repeater station on the Overland Telegraph Line, which linked Adelaide to Darwin and Great Britain. The OTL was completed in 1872. It traced Stuart's route and opened up the interior for permanent settlement.The telegraph station was sited near what was thought to be a permanent waterhole in the normally dry Todd River. The settlement was optimistically named Alice Springs after the wife of the former Postmaster General of South Australia, Sir Charles Todd. The Todd River was named after Sir Charles.
It was not until alluvial gold was discovered at Arltunga, 100 kilometres (62 mi) east of the present Alice Springs, in 1887 that any significant European settlement occurred. The town's first substantial building was the Stuart Town Gaol in Parson's street which was built in 1909 when the town had a European population of less than 20 people. Many of the gaol's first prisoners were first contact aboriginal men incarcerated for killing cattle. Central Australia's first hospital, Adelaide House, was built in 1926 when the European population of the town was about 40. It was not until 1929 when the train line to Alice was built, that the town's European population began to grow. Aboriginal centralians outnumbered European Centralians until the mid 1930s. Until 31 August 1933, the town was officially known as Stuart.
The original mode of British-Australian transportation in the outback were camel trains, operated by immigrants from Pathan tribes in the North-West frontier of then British India (present-day Pakistan); known locally as Afghan camellers based at Hergott Springs, or Marree as it is now known. Many camelleers moved to Alice Springs in 1929 when the railway finally reached the town. They lived on the block where the town council now is transporting goods from
