page_title: Alice Springs
section_title: Geography
hierarchical_section_title: Alice Springs / Geography
caption_attribution_description: Alice Springs Panorama
context_page_description: Alice Springs is the third-largest town in the Northern Territory of Australia. Known as Stuart until 31 August 1933, the name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William Whitfield Mills after Alice, Lady Todd, wife of the telegraph pioneer Sir Charles Todd. Now colloquially known as The Alice or simply Alice, the town is situated roughly in Australia's geographic centre. It is nearly equidistant from Adelaide and Darwin.
  The area is known as Mparntwe to its original inhabitants, the Arrernte, who have lived in the Central Australian desert in and around what is now Alice Springs for tens of thousands of years.
  Alice Springs had an urban population of 26,534 in June 2018, having declined an average of 1.16% per year the preceding five years. The town's population accounts for approximately 10 per cent of the population of the Northern Territory.
  The town straddles the usually dry Todd River on the northern side of the MacDonnell Ranges. The surrounding region is known as Central Australia, or the Red Centre, an arid environment consisting of several different deserts.
context_section_description: The region around Alice Springs is part of the Central Ranges xeric scrub area of dry scrubby grassland and includes the MacDonnell Ranges which run east and west of the town and contain a number of hiking trails and swimming holes such as Ormiston Gorge, Ormiston Gorge Creek, Red Bank Gorge and Glen Helen Gorge. The 223-kilometre-long (139 mi) Larapinta Trail follows the West MacDonnell Ranges and is considered among the world's great walking experiences.
  The Simpson Desert, southeast of Alice Springs is one of Australia's great wilderness areas containing giant, red sand dunes and interesting rock formations such as Chambers Pillar and Rainbow Valley.
caption: Panorama of Alice Springs
exif: {}