The Stuart Town Gaol on Parsons Street is the oldest surviving building in Alice Springs, a compact stone prison constructed in 1907 when the town was still called Stuart and held barely three dozen European residents. The thick limestone walls were built to keep prisoners in the Central Australian heat, and the cells are remarkably well preserved given the building's age and the harshness of the climate.
The gaol is open for self-guided tours and interprets the rough-edged early history of the town — the pastoral workers, telegraph linesmen, and itinerant characters who were occasionally locked up here in the decades before Alice Springs grew into anything resembling a proper town. It gives a vivid impression of frontier life in the remote centre a century ago.