Declaration of a Desert Town - 30 October 1890

Following John McDouall Stuart's explorations between 1857 and 1862, the Overland Telegraph Line and camel train route through Northern South Australia led to the foundation of a township near the Simpson Desert, roughly 1000km North of Adelaide on this day in 1890.

Oodnadatta, derived from the aboriginal word "utnadata" (mulga blossom), became the terminus of the Great Northern Railway Line, later renamed "The Ghan", until the line was extended to Alice Springs in 1929. In 1981 the railway line was moved further West and since 2003 runs all the way North to Darwin.

Today the town is famous for the Oodnadatta Track, a popular 620km unsealed outback road between Marla on the Stuart Highway and Marree, where it connects with the Birdsville Track., which crosses two deserts and leads to southern Queensland. Oodnadatta has a population of just under 300, half of which are Aboriginal Australians, and survives mainly thanks to tourists travelling the track and mining nearby.

Elsewhere in the world, Henry VII of England, first of the Tudor dynasty, was crowned king (1485). Prince William of Denmark arrived in Athens to assume the Greek throne as King George I, 7 months after his election (1863), the city of Helena in Montana was founded after the discovery of gold (1864), the first successful kidney transplant was peformed (Edinburgh/UK, 1960), Europe and Asia were for the first time connected through the Bosporus Bridge (Istanbul/Turkey, 1973), Muhammad Ali and George Foreman battled it out in Kinshasa/Zaire during the "Rumble In The Jungle" (1974) and the rebuilt Frauenkirche was reconsecrated 60 years after its destruction during WW2 (Dresden/Germany, 2005).

Born on this day were, amongst others, John Adams, the 2nd US President (Braintree/Massachusetts, 1735), Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Moscow/Russia, 1821) and Diego "Hand-of-God" Maradona (Buenos Aires/Argentina, 1960).