Aputula

History

A railway siding called Finke Siding was created on the Central Australia Railway around 1925. It began as a small working men's camp, where the fettlers (railway workers) lived in concrete buildings without family. The nearest police and postal services were at Charlotte Waters and the district's cattle yards and railway station were at Rumbalara. Car travellers were rare. Aboriginal people started visiting the siding as soon as it was built. Lower Southern Arrernte and Luritja people established a camp in the sandhills nearby, trading dingo scalps, wild flowers, artefacts and other items for water and food. A police station was built in the late 1930s, after the Charlotte Waters one closed down and the policemen, trackers, their families and some "aged and infirm" Aboriginal people moved to Finke. Residents petitioned for a postal service in 1938. Aboriginal visitors increased as people from Ernabella came to pick up supplies from the train. During the war years, the Central Australian Railway was the main transport route for thousands of soldiers from the southern states going to war in the Pacific, and the siding got its first repeater station operator as well as its first privately owned business. Finke used to have a police force mounted on camels, possibly "the largest police patrol in the world", and the last police station in the NT to use camels. Aboriginal trackers were an essential part of the patrols, which were often responsible for finding people lost in the bush. The last camel patrol left Finke in 1953. Trackers were also invaluable in solving crimes such as the Sundown murders in 1957. Finke police were also responsible for inspecting stock, registration of births, marriages and deaths, looking after mines, protecting birds and collecting taxes. The…

Most-observed species

• short-beaked echidna

  Tachyglossus aculeatus (Shaw, 1792) · Mammalia
  32
• Magpie-lark

  Grallina cyanoleuca (Latham, 1802) · Aves
  3
• Zebra Finch

  Taeniopygia guttata (Vieillot, 1817) · Aves
  3
• Spotted Harrier

  Circus assimilis Jardine & Selby, 1828 · Aves
  3
• Central Bearded Dragon

  Pogona vitticeps (Ahl, 1926) · Squamata
  2
• Australian Bustard

  Ardeotis australis (J.E.Gray, 1829) · Aves
  2
• Red-backed Kingfisher

  Todiramphus pyrrhopygius (Gould, 1841) · Aves
  2
• Little Corella

  Cacatua sanguinea Gould, 1843 · Aves
  2