Longitude 131°
Australian Pioneers and Explorers
'We didn't know it was tough because we knew nothing else.'
Peter Severin
Peter Severin has been at Curtin Springs for most of his life. But compared to some of the station's other 'inhabitants', he is a novice.
The boundaries of Curtin Springs contain four thousand square kilometres. They also contain salt lakes that are the remnants of an ancient inland sea, fossils of some of the earliest life forms to exist on Earth ... and Mount Conner.
This great mesa is what is left of a mighty mountain that is seven hundred million years old, and in its rock and sand are the ashes of three generations of the Severin family. It is one of the reasons why Peter Severin will never leave.
Before coming to Curtin Springs, Peter was a head stockman, responsible for 16,000 head of someone else's cattle. He swapped those responsibilities for 1,500 head of his own and the lease on Curtin Springs. It was 1956, and his timing was terrible - the Centre was going into a nine-year drought.
'In our first nine years,' says Peter, 'if you talked it up, we got maybe an inch of rain.'
It wasn't long before he was responsible for just 200 head of cattle.
Struggling to survive, he had to learn new ways to 'earn a quid', and decided there was one to be made in petrol. For early tourists to Uluru, Peter's house became their last stop.
'People would fill up here before going to the Rock,' he says. 'We saw six people the first year.'
Fortunately, it was just the beginning. Soon tourism pioneer Len Tuit was bringing groups in ex-army four-wheel-drive trucks. After filling the thirsty vehicles, Peter and his wife, Dawn would feed Len's campers with morning tea - two scones with jam and cream and a cup of tea for 3/6. He was learning that every little bit helped.
Of course, what dry and dusty travellers really wanted could only be sold with a liquor licence, so Peter got himself one. He even learned ways around the licensing requirement to sell it by the gallon.
The Curtin Springs Roadside Inn quickly became the first tourism operation outside Alice Springs. Although still learning - 'We didn't know the tourism industry was an industry' - Peter kept Curtin Springs afloat during the drought.
Hundreds of miles from anywhere, water was even more valuable than petrol, and Peter had the only bore around. He began delivering both in 44-gallon drums to Len Tuit's Uluru campsite.
Over the years, Peter learned many more new skills. He dug the first bore at Uluru, helped build the first accommodation out of desert rock, carved the runway out of clay and loam with pick and shovel, and erected the chain to the top of the Rock. The chain that has now survived more than five million climbers.
Peter has poured many 44-gallon drums of his own blood, sweat and tears into Curtin Springs, but that's not the other reason he will spend the rest of his days there.
'I will never leave. I was 29 when I came here, and only then did I start to learn.'
Peter Severin never wants to stop learning.
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