What Alice Springs is known for

Alice Springs is a town of about 31,000 near the dead centre of Australia, some 1,500 kilometres from the nearest large body of water. It is known for the Henley-on-Todd, which runs the world’s only boat race down a dry river. The boats have bottoms cut out, and crews climb in and run them along the sand.

A river that is sand

Alice Springs sits near the dead centre of Australia, with no coast, no lake and no harbour. The Todd, which the Arrernte know as Lhere Mparntwe, has zero to very low flow for 95 percent of the year, and its bed holds trees and sites sacred to the Traditional Owners.

By the early 1950s travellers were already crossing Central Australia for Ayers Rock and the ranges, and the Ghan had been reaching Alice Springs since 1929. The Todd ran through the middle of the town, and for most of the year what it offered anyone who wanted a river was sand.

A regatta on the sand

Reg Smith, of the Alice Springs Meteorological Bureau, proposed a regatta on the lines of Henley, and the Rotary Club of Alice Springs took the idea up and staged the first Henley-on-Todd in 1962, for charity.

What the joke earns

The joke became an institution: a spectacle of sand yachts, bottomless boats and mock naval battles that draws about 3,000 to 4,000 people, alongside Parrtjima in April and the Camel Cup in July. The Alice Springs MacDonnell region logged 340,000 overnight visitors in the year to December 2024.

Why it worked

Alice Springs committed to the one thing it did not have and refused to be embarrassed by it. A riverbed that is dry most of the year, which another town would have called a liability, became the whole event, run on sand the Arrernte know as Lhere Mparntwe.

The absurdity was the point, and it held: the single year the race was called off for water in the Todd, 1993, only sharpened the joke. The town did not pretend to a river; it raced on the one it has.