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Arltunga is only in its earliest infancy, and is sadly handicapped. But then one is assured "There's any Scotch quantity of reefs about," and "The country hasn't been half prospected yet." Country, by the way, never is, it seems.
The mica field, on the other hand, arrived some time back at a working age. It has, as it were, bought its shovel and done a little towards paying for it. Some mica of good quality, and in exceptionally large sheets, too, is to be had.
I know little or nothing about the value of a mica claim; do not even know whither when raised the shiny transparency goes. Much is, I know, used for insulating purposes on electrical machines, but in such cases only small washers are required as a rule. As to the larger blocks, so attractive to the eye when prepared for exhibition, ignorance possesses me.
If one has the inclination one may, however, learn a great deal about it, if one likes to run up to Alice Springs. In search of information (and no policeman being handy), I approached a prospector. He was an encylopædia on the subject. Within five minutes I knew that lawyers now-a-days wrote out their wills and other people's on mica because it will not burn, and that lanterns for enclosing electric arc lights are fitted with the same material in place of glass, the heat (sometimes reaching as high as 10 or 12 horse-power) emanating from the electric light being altogether too fierce for combustible glass to withstand! If I had stayed another day in Alice Springs, I should have written a treatise on "Mica and its Uses."
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The telegraph station is a mile and a half beyond the Alice township, and with its substantial roomy stone buildings and outhouses makes up another little township of itself. Near the station there is in the Todd a very large waterhole, which contains a sufficient permanent and unlimited supply of fresh water to deserve the name of spring. There are also a couple of wells on a bank of the creek; the water of one of them is used for gardening purposes, the other's, I was told, is almost salt.
The flat around the station is, like nearly all the flats within the ranges, covered with saltbush and other stock-fattening growth. Grasses of many valuable kinds flourish thickly in the hills and gullies—in fact, no better limited tracts of pastoral country could one wish to see than are to be found within and in the neighborhood of these MacDonnell Ranges.
The climate, too, is nearly all that could be desired throughout the greater part of each year. The days are warm, the nights cool—a little too much warmth sometimes, at others a little too much cold.