Tourists are on the hunt for a place in Australia that doesn’t exist.
Searches for the town of Agnes Bluff are at an all-time high this month, with people across the country and even the world wanting to know where it is.
Agnes Bluff is a remote Northern Territory location in the The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, a novel by Australian author Holly Ringland and now a TV series on Amazon Prime Video.
The town made its first appearance in the fourth episode on August 11 and data obtained by news.com.au shows Google searches for Agnes Bluff grew 1640 per cent between July and August in Australia, and another 40 per cent in September.
While Australia is the top country searching for Agnes Bluff, it’s followed by Spain, Canada, the UK, US and Italy.
In the television series, Alice Hart, played by Alycia Debnam-Carey, locates Agnes Bluff on a map and heads there, taking up a job in the nearby Mia Tukurta National Park, where there is a stunning crater.
The bad news is, you won’t find Agnes Bluff or Mia Tukurta National Park on any map in real life.
But the good news is, they are based on real life places found in the Territory.
Ms Ringland told news.com.au the inspiration for Alice’s time in the Australian outback came from when she used to live on Anangu land in Australia’s Western Desert.
“After I left, it was a place and time in my life that I never stopped yearning for,” she said.
“Years later, when I started writing The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, one of the first things I knew about the trajectory of Alice’s life was that some of her early adulthood would be spent in the dramatic beauty of the desert.
“I created Agnes Bluff, the national park, and the crater full of blood-red desert peas, because to write about the real place where I lived would be telling stories from the land that aren’t mine to tell.
“To know people are Googling these places I fictionalised feels like a shot of joy straight to my heart – I don’t know that there could be a greater compliment given to my writing. “
The TV series was also filmed at real locations in Central Australia.
They included Alice Springs Desert Park, Simpsons Gap, Ooraminna Station, Standley Chasm, and Ormiston Gorge.
Ormiston Gorge, for example, was the “Janglay Waterhole” in the story.
The remarkable crater seen in the series was Gosses Bluff crater, about 175 km west of Alice Springs.
Director Glendyn Ivin described the crater as “one of the most beautiful and special places I’ve ever been” when speaking to the NT News last month.
He visited the Northern Territory for the first time to film the series.
Search interest in Gosses Bluff crater is currently at a 15-year high in Australia.
Searches for the site increased 500 per cent in August compared to the previous month, and another 50 per cent in September.
Australia and the UK are the top countries searching for it.
A Google Trends data analyst told news.com.au the top question on the Gosses Bluff crater in Australia in the past two months was “what is the crater in The Lost Flowers for Alice Hart?”.
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Gosses Bluff, also known by its traditional Aboriginal name, Tnorala, is a registered sacred site but traditional owners welcome visitors.
Access within the crater and walking along the rim is not permitted, but there are viewing points with views into the crater.
There is a short walk to a lookout on an adjacent ridge and a longer loop walk which provides a higher vantage point and superior views of the crater, according to the Parks and Wildlife Commission of the Northern Territory.
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