Jay Creek is in the MacDonnell Ranges 45 kilometres west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. It was a government settlement for Indigenous Australians which for a time in the late 1920s and early '30s included 45 children from a home named 'The Bungalow' (37 of whom were under the age of 12) temporarily housed in a corrugated shed with a superintendent and matron housed separately in two tents.
Jay Creek was home to the Western Arrernte people. In 1937 Jay Creek was declared as one of three permanent camps or reserves for the Alice Springs Aboriginal population. It was intended a buffer between the semi-nomadic people living in far western regions and the more sophisticated inhabitants of Alice Springs and environs, in particular for the non-working, aged and infirm around Alice.
Famous quotes containing the words jay and/or creek:
“You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)