What was the name of the town that plays a central role in Nevil Shute's novel "A Town Like Alice"?

"A Town Like Alice" appeared in 1950 and forms a bridge in Nevil Shute's literary work. He had previously written some very powerful stories based in World War II settings. The novel takes the reader from the horrors of wartime southeast Asia to early postwar Australia; much of Shute's later work was set in Australia.

It is a story of human endurance and hope. Jean Paget, who has received an unexpected inheritance after the war wants to repay the kindness of Malay villagers who helped her survive internment by the Japanese; she plans to build a well for them. Out in Malaya she discovers that Sergeant Joe Harman, a POW whom she had met while in internment and whom she believed to be dead, had, in fact, survived torture by the Japanese. She tracks him down in his native Queensland, Australia. They fall in love.

Joe's town, Willstown, is a spartan settlement with few amenities; it regularly loses its young people who seek opportunities elsewhere. Jean has an ambition to convert the settlement into an attractive desert town, along the lines of Alice Springs (a town in the Northern Territory). The latter part of the novel focuses on her and Joe's efforts to convert Willstown into "a town like Alice".

The fictional Willstown is believed to be based on real-life Burketown (pictured) and Normanton in Queensland.

The 1956 film of the same name took liberties with the plot, focusing on the WW2 horrors and missing out the tale of reconstruction and regeneration.