Oodnadatta
{{#invoke:other uses|otheruses}} Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use Australian English Template:Infobox Australian place
Oodnadatta is a small, remote outback town and locality in the Australian state of South Australia, located Template:Convert north-north-west of the state capital of Adelaide by road or Template:Convert direct, at an altitude of Template:Convert. The unsealed Oodnadatta Track, an outback road popular with tourists, runs through the town.
Town facilities include a hotel, caravan park, post office, general stores, police station, hospital, fuel and minor mechanical repairs. The old railway station now serves as a museum. From the 1880s to the 1930s, Oodnadatta was a base for camel drivers and their animals, which provided cartage when the railway was under construction and along outback tracks before roads were established.<ref name = NRMA/>
After the railway line was lifted, Oodnadatta's role changed from that of a government service centre and supply depot for surrounding pastoral properties to a residential freehold town for Aboriginal families who, moving from cattle work, bought empty houses as their railway employee occupants left.<ref name = NRMA/>
Origin of name
Two meanings of the name are recorded. One derives from the Aboriginal word utnadata, meaning "yellow blossom of the mulga".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> However, mulga trees do not grow anywhere near the town. The alternative meaning is coodnadatta or kudnadatta, meaning "dead man's poo": the first two syllables encompass "rotten" or "excreta" and the second two refer to "there".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:RpTemplate:Spaces<ref name=Wilson>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp
History
Template:See also For tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal tribes visited the place where Oodnadatta is located as a reliable source of water on their trade route; there was no settlement at Oodnadatta itself.<ref name=AGiles80>Template:Cite news</ref> John McDouall Stuart explored the region in 1859. His route was generally followed by the surveyors of the Overland Telegraph Line, completed in 1872. Alfred Giles referred to a place called the Yellow Waterhole, or Angle Pole, later known as Hookey's Waterhole and The Peake, near Oodnadatta.<ref name=AGiles80/> The course chosen for the Central Australia Railway likewise followed the route because a water supply was essential for steam locomotives. From 1891, Oodnadatta was an important station on the railway until the line closed in 1981, to be replaced in 2004 by the Adelaide–Darwin rail corridor about Template:Convert to the west.<ref name=SMH>Template:Cite web</ref>
Telegraphs, camels and railways
Angle Pole (Template:Coord) is the point near Oodnadatta where the direction of the telegraph line changed to a more northerly direction.<ref>The Angle Pole Memorial SA</ref> It is near the Peake cattle station,<ref name=WA>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=PropertyBrowser>Template:Cite web</ref> also known as "The Peake", or Freeling Springs.<ref name=AGiles80/> The ruins of Peake telegraph station exist on the station today.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Alfred Giles refers to his only meeting with the explorer Ernest Giles (no relation) at "the Peake" in the 1870s.<ref name=AGiles80/>
By the 1880s the telegraph route was being used by camel trains, many led by "Afghan" cameleers (actually from many different places in the Indian subcontinent), orTemplate:'Ghans, as they became known, who were brought to Australia for the task of hauling goods into Central Australia for pioneer settlers.<ref name=SAHAfghan>Template:Cite web</ref> Many of the cameleers settled in Oodnadatta and Marree, some with families and some marrying, mainly Aboriginal women.<ref name=monument>Template:Cite web</ref>
In the 1880s, Angle Pole was identified as the proposed terminus for the extension of the Great Northern Railway. When the railway was built, a town was established here, and in October 1890 was proclaimed a government township and renamed Oodnadatta.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Great Northern to Government Gums – A Mineral Railway Callaghan, W.H. Australian Railway History, September;October, 2008 pp283-301;323-336</ref>
In 1889, Angle Pole was also proposed as the south-eastern terminus of a land grant railway from Roebuck Bay in Western Australia. This railway was proposed by a London syndicate and would have been about 1000 miles (1600 km) long, with the wider Template:RailGauge gauge. However this was never built.<ref name=WA/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
The town remained the terminus of the Great Northern Railway until the line was extended to Alice Springs in 1929 and the railway's name was changed to the Central Australia Railway. The railway was built with narrow gauge (Template:RailGauge) tracks, and train traffic was frequently disrupted by washouts and other damage to the trackbed, leading to a slow and unreliable service. The railway through Oodnadatta was closed and a new standard gauge line was built to the west, bypassing Oodnadatta, and opening in October 1980.<ref name=Tregaskis>Template:Cite news</ref>
World War II
Oodnadatta's busiest era was World War II when the Australian Army and the Royal Australian Air Force set up local facilities to service troop trains and aircraft en route to Darwin.Template:Citation needed
21st century
Tourist traffic along the Oodnadatta Track and the mining industry keep the village alive. The Aboriginal school is the biggest employer.<ref name = NRMA/>
In 2018, the federal government announced a major upgrade to the Track, to better serve both the tourists and truck drivers on this major freight and cattle transport route.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In 2023, a reverse osmosis water desalination plant was installed in the town, giving it access to treated drinking tap water for the first time. The town's drinking water supply was previously untreated groundwater from the Great Artesian Basin, which the state government warned residents to avoid as early as the 1980s due to the risk of the rare life-threatening brain infection primary amoebic meningoencephalitis.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Access, facilities, attractions
Oodnadatta can be reached by an unsealed road from Coober Pedy or via the unsealed Oodnadatta Track from Marree to Marla or from the north via Finke/Aputula, NT (on the "Old Ghan Heritage Trail").<ref name=NRMA>Template:Cite web</ref>
The Pink Roadhouse (so-called because it is painted bright pink) provides petrol, a general store, meals, a variety of accommodation, and post office facilities.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Transcontinental Hotel, built in the 1890s, is on the same side of the road, as is the caravan park.<ref name=SMH/><ref name=SAHOodnatown>Template:Cite web</ref>
Oodnadatta is serviced twice weekly by the Coober Pedy Oodnadatta One Day Mail Run. The OKA mail truck also carries some general freight and passengers.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The Template:Convert air strip adjacent to the town, originally built during World War II,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> has a sealed surface.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Historic buildings
The historic Oodnadatta railway station, now a museum, is listed on the South Australian Heritage Register.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Oodnadatta Aboriginal School
The Oodnadatta Aboriginal School, located in Kutaya Terrace, is a school operated by the Government of South Australia offering education from Reception to Year 12. In 2018, the school had a total enrolment of 14 students, of whom 86% were indigenous, and a teaching staff of three.<ref name=acara-oodnadatta>Template:Citation</ref><ref name=oas>Template:Citation</ref>
Climate
Oodnadatta has a hot desert climate (Köppen: BWh), with extremely hot summers and mild winters.<ref name=Peel>Template:Cite journal</ref> The town's position in the Outback causes large seasonal variation. Average maxima vary from Template:Convert in January to Template:Convert in July while average minima fluctuate between Template:Convert in January and Template:Convert in July.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Mean average annual precipitation is very low: Template:Convert, spread between 34.4 precipitation days. The town is very sunny, with 182.5 clear days and only 59.1 cloudy days per annum. There is a large sign in Oodnadatta claiming the town is "The driest town, the driest state of the driest Continent".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Extreme temperatures have ranged from Template:Convert on 16 July 1979 to Template:Convert on 2 January 1960, the highest reliably measured maximum temperature in Australia.<ref name="NCDC">Global Measured Extremes of Temperature and Precipitation. Template:Webarchive National Climatic Data Center. Retrieved 21 June 2007.</ref><ref name="BoMExtremes">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> This record stood unequalled until 13 January 2022, when a temperature of 50.7 °C (123.3 °F) was measured in Onslow, Western Australia, thus equalling Oodnadatta's record.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="ABC">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Ignatius">Template:Cite news</ref> A higher temperature was recorded at Cloncurry in 1889; however, this has since been shown to have been recorded in a non-standard enclosure and likely to have been considerably cooler than first believed.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Governance
Oodnadatta is located within the federal Division of Grey, the state electoral district of Stuart, the Pastoral Unincorporated Area of South Australia and the state's Far North region.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=AEC/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="LMV"/> In the absence of a local government authority, the community in Oodnadatta receives municipal services from a state government agency, the Outback Communities Authority.<ref name=OCA>Template:Cite web</ref>
Oodnadatta on Mars
The name Oodnadatta has been used as a name for a crater on the planet Mars.<ref>Categories for Naming Features on Planets and Satellites, Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature, USGS Astrogeology Science Center, NASA</ref>
See also
References
Notes
Citations
Further reading
- Oodnadatta (on Flinders Ranges Research)
- Oodnadatta (Aussie Towns)
- Tracking History to Oodnadatta by Roderick Eime
- Oodnadatta Pioneer Cemetery with photos of headstones