Kaltukatjara

Aged Care | Clinic | Community Centre | Community Info | School | Store

Kaltukatjara is located 670 km south west from Alice Springs by road via Uluru and it takes 7 hours to drive there. By air it is 495 kms, it takes 1.5 hours to fly to Alice Springs.

The road from Alice Springs to Kaltukatjara is both sealed & unsealed. The last 190 kms are dirt. Kaltukatjara is situated in the Petermann Ranges in the far south western corner of the Northern Territory, 7 kilometres east of the Western Australian border. The settlement is a few hundred metres from the dry bed of the Docker Creek.

History

The site that is now Kaltukatjara was originally named Docker River by Ernest Giles during his expedition of 1872. Pastors Duguid and Strehlow surveyed the area in the 1930s with a view to establishing a settlement for the people in the area. It was decided not to proceed with this at that time. During the 30s and 40s Luthern missionaries told the Pitjantjatjara people of the Kaltukatjara area to go to Areyonga (then an outstation of Hermannsburg mission) where they would be supplied with food and clothing. Although many Anangu moved in of their own free will, some stayed in the Petermanns. In the 1960s Areyonga Anangu strongly desired to move back to the area around Docker River and with government assistance a permanent settlement was established there in 1967-8. Over 300 Anangu moved to establish the new settlement. By the proclamation of the Aboriginal Lands Rights (N.T.) Act, 1976, Anangu in the region gained freehold title to these traditional lands an area of 44,970 square kilometres.