Pioneer Women Hall of Fame Australia - Outback IT

National Pioneer Women Hall of Fame, Australia Accepted March, 2016 http:/ / pioneerwom en.com .au/ The year Information Technology joined the Telegraph Station in Alice Springs Anna Lichtenberg, Ph.D. and Cindy Mason, CMT, Ph.D. Submitted and Accepted by the Australian National Museum for Pioneering Women in the Outback. Initial draft July 2015; Accepted for Archives March 2016. This is the story of how two women, myself (Anna Lichtenberg) and Cindy Mason, brought Information Technology to Alice Springs in the central desert of Australia in 1982. Alice Springs or Mparntwe as its known by the original inhabitants, the Arrernet, is in the Central Australian Desert, 1500kms from the nearest city. It’s the real old Australia, before the Europeans arrived. Its a place where you feel the ancient bones and get a sense of how old the continent really is and how distinctly weird. The history of aboriginal humanity is displayed on rocks here, and you can run out of road in the heat and the flies, lose track of where you are, and the desert grows bigger and hotter the further you go from town. Inside town, the iconic Telegraph Station sits near a favourite shady spot for picnicking. The Telegraph Station was the communication hub for the red centre and Alice Springs and supported the transfer of goods and information for many years. During the time we built up the “outback IT”, there was a School of the Air, but just a few TV channels at certain times of the day, with non-stop re-runs from how to do a knee surgery to cricket matches. Video rentals were very popular. There were no traffic lights or movie theatres, and limited signs of a modern age. There was a rumour that Alice was such a small town you could go mad from boredom and the heat. In fact, living in Alice was far from boring…. although occasionally there were stories about someone going mad and on hot days, everyone gathered in the freezer aisle at the grocers because even swamp coolers broke down on those days. Favourite pastimes included camel races, star gazing, a crew race that mocked the British called the Henley-on-Todd Festival (the rivers were dead dry, full of sand, so the boat oars must dig into the sand to move forward), and camping/exploring the northern territory outback. Among the town people, the folk-club was a favourite and the arts and music scene was strong with a deep connection to where we were, through the art and music of the aborigines living among and around us. That is, they walked among us at the grocery and in town, but they did not sleep in houses, because all of nature is their home and family – and their world is a world called dreamtime. They slept in groups in the dry riverbeds, or in camps just outside of town. It wasn’t unusual to see dogs with broken legs hopping behind their owner and women with physical injuries were not uncommon in town. During the time we were building up local computer studies, in 1982-1984, the first aborigine in the territory got a job as teller at a bank. This was an achievement hard for the average Australian to understand, unless they knew that most aborigines did not work with paper or have paper in their life. Their paintings were on bark with sand, dyed with local colourful rocks and water. The aboriginal instruments also came from natural objects – like the didgeridoo, that is made from the fallen limbs of trees hollowed out by ants. This is the culture and the town in which we began our work on outback IT. In 1982, I was the newly appointed coordinator and lecturer of General Studies in Alice Springs, working at the Community College (now Charles Darwin University) with a new college director, Robert Cruise. We had a few buildings on the edge of town, with gum trees and loud cockatoos and the flies and the heat, not far from the old Telegraph Station. I was working to grow collaborations between the community and the college with more programs for tertiary education and certification, especially for girls and young women in the area. I didn’t realize at the time how much change was ahead. The signs were there, if I look back. There was a tiny computer store in Alice, and at some point, the town decided we should build our first stop light. So much happened during 1983-1984, personally, but also perhaps, the hand of fate did play a part? There was an old aboriginal woman who “pointed the bone” at me, and I spent time in the local hospital for peritonitis (?). I also met Cindy Mason, an American from Silicon Valley, who moved to town. She had left graduate school in computer studies to move to Alice with her new husband, an engineer. Fearing isolation and the unknown, she brought every single computer science notebook and magazine she owned with her. She later confessed to me that she had set the kitchen on fire as a new bride the first week in town, and, after a lengthy discussion with her new husband, they agreed she should go and visit the computer store to try and find something else to do other than cook. So that is how we met. The owner of the store brought her round to the college, and the rest, as they say, is herstory. In the span of 15 months, we transitioned from a program with mostly short courses in areas of home economics, fashion and dressmaking, as well as many short-term interest/hobby, music and distance courses to a program with a full curricula of packed computer studies courses. The computers were clunky. The computer stations and resources were limited. However, with the first course offering, Programming in Basic, community interest had been ignited and student enrollments in the programs increased rapidly as word spread through town of our new computer courses. Short course computer program offerings were expanded and additional languages were added with a total of 8 classes, based on Cindy’s notes and a computer magazine she had brought to Alice which just happened to have an article laying out the essentials for a top computer curricula. The College was fortunate to have access to the goodwill and expertise of Cindy in setting up computer labs and programs. Initially programs were at an introductory level however with increasing participant interest additional programs at more advanced levels were included and met the guidelines for computer science curricula set by the Association for Computing Machinery, contained in the magazine Cindy had stuffed in a box without thinking when she packed for Alice. Cindy’s enthusiasm, her computer and training skills ensured her students’ maintained involvement and interest in developing a totally new set of skills that now underpin all aspects of study and work in modern life. Within a few years Alice Springs had a computer and Apple store (set up and successfully run by former College personnel). Alice Springs was beginning to lose its isolation and it was starting to expand and reach out to the rest of Australia. The college became what is now Charles Darwin University. Cindy returned to the U.S. to complete her Ph.D., winning an award for her Ph.D. and a fellowship at NASA. I had my first child, Ben, and continued to expand and develop education programs in Australia along side technology as it continues to evolve. Cindy and I remain friends, using email, to keep in touch with our lives. Image Credits: Babak Tafreshi