Of place and Alice Springs: Two contested sites in an Australian outback community

Abstract

This paper considers the notion of place in Alice Springs, Australia, and traverses the importance of memory as well as the concepts and construction of place and community. People’s daily, lived socio-cultural experiences in this Northern Territory town are defined by numerous factors, including the importance of texts, which give meaning to place, social memories as well as narratives and symbols, all of which are instrumental in creating identity and a sense of place. Furthermore, a legacy of the colonial past is still informing the post-colonial present in Alice Springs. Memories of the settler state, both local and national, as well as individual and collective social and cultural relations continue to inform and define the community and the place today. In particular, two adjacent places within the town – the Todd Mall and the Todd River – reflect continuing, fluid and shifting senses of place. Privilege and consumerism; spatial suppression and submersion co-exist in a state of hegemonic dualism. Amid such contestation, paradoxes emerge which impact on the understanding and creation of negotiating a sense of place in this community.