Arulte Atwatye is a registered sacred site near the Stuart Highway, about an hour's drive north of Alice Springs. The conservation reserve was known for far too long as Native Gap.
Thanks to the determined efforts of the area's apmerek-artwey (traditional owners) it is now officially called the Arulte Atwatye Conservation Reserve.
They decided to ask the NT government to recognise the site's real name at a joint management meeting in May 2023. The government, they reasoned, should drop the European name altogether – no dual naming, unlike most parks and reserves in the Territory.
Three months later, apmerek-artwey Charmaine Rice and Cameron Furber met with the NT's place names committee to set out why the name change was overdue. It was about valuing and protecting the site's spiritual significance.
They explained that arulte (back of the shoulder) refers to the shape of the nearby Hann Range, named by John Ross after fellow overland telegraph line explorers Frank and William Hann. And that atwatye means a gap in a mountain range.
The range divides the Arrernte and Anmatyerr language regions, with speakers of both languages using the area's original name.
Ms Rice said it was time for a name change. "All other places have a name in their language."
The committee was supportive. Native Gap had to go. In time, folks would learn how to say ar-OOL-ta art-WAT-cha.
"There's strength there in that name," apmerek-artwey Veronica Lynch told the joint management meeting. A fitting name for a place that's part of the much-loved arntetherrke (carpet snake) songline.
"A giant carpet snake ancestor came out of a soak or small waterhole near this gap," a new sign now informs visitors.
"He sang a song which was so full of feeling that the throats of the young maidens felt as though they were tightly bound with grass."
"The snake travelled northwest to the foot of the range where fig trees grow. Again, he sang and again the young women were witchelka (choked with emotion and love). The great snake rested his head on the range. Then he went up into the sky to return to the earth at the Glen Helen waterhole, 150 kilometres to the southwest. Taking the shape of a man, he then walked back to the soak at Arulte Atwatye, where he remains today."
Senior apmerek-artwey Gerard Rice hopes sharing the story will promote respect and make visitors understand that the powerful love song of arntetherrke is still on everyone's lips.
"They like that song and they sing that song to charm the women. It's too deadly! Everybody knows, right up to Alice Springs. They get dressed up as a cowboy, clean shave, hair oil and they look in the mirror and they sing that song, my grandfather's song."
The soakage where the snake ancestor came to rest was an important source of water for Aboriginal people since time immemorial, a gathering place that meant shelter, company and survival.
In the early 1870s, workers on the telegraph line also relied on the water, calling it Native Well Gap. Surveyor William Whitfield Mills recorded a "native well situated in a gap in Hann's Range".
After sustaining the people of the land for tens of thousands of years the soakage didn't survive the telegraph line. In 1991, stopping over where it used to be, Alice Springs postmaster Francis Gillen recorded in his diary how the workers, "thinking to improve the [water] supply deepened it by blasting".
"Having destroyed the rock which dammed the water back, it escaped through the porous rocks underneath and there was no longer a soakage," he wrote.
Mr Rice shakes his head just thinking about it.
"It was a terrible thing to do to our old people. Makes me sad! White men didn't know nothing about the country. They just went past."
After the blast people simply shortened the name to Native Gap. A Country Liberal Party government made the new name official in 1981 by declaring the area the Native Gap Conservation Reserve.
Mr Rice is glad those days are history. Not only is the name change "very, very, very important", he said. "It's the law".
"I reckon it is right to put the traditional law name for that country, so we know what it means to us. It was the name before all of us. It's still the same name all the time - Arulte Atwatye."
"I'm happy for it," added his daughter Charmaine Rice. "The whole family is happy."
