Alice Springs

Sunday 14th – Wednesday 17th

Happy Mother’s Day.

Alice Springs is a town I like. It isn’t a large town, but because it’s remote it has to provide everything in one compact location for its residents and tourists. Everything you’d find in a large city is here, within a 10 minute drive of wherever you are.

Alice from the Anzac Hill lookout.

Alice from the Anzac Hill lookout.

We checked in to the Big 4 Caravan Park ($48/n – yikes!) for 3 nights. Steve and I went for a drive into town and a walk around Todd Mall -not much open, though an art shop had some truly beautiful aboriginal paintings … we can’t buy any more, we’ve run out of wall space. It was good to have a relaxing day.

Over the next few days we visited Anzac Hill for lovely views of Alice and the surrounding Ranges, the Royal Flying Doctor Service which has a very well presented hologram chronicling their history and describing their current service, and the Alice Springs Desert Park. The Desert Park was excellent – divided into the different regions experienced in this arid land with the plants and animals of each setting there. The rangers run informational sessions throughout the park every hour or so – we attended the ‘animal survival’ talk which took us into the nocturnal house (the bilby has got babies!), the indigenous traditional medicines talk and the free-flying bird displays. All fantastic. Steve is now treating a tiny wart he has on his finger with ‘Dead Finish’ and we bought some traditional medicine for rubbing onto .. well, anything really – it seems to be a real cure-all. Hmm, I’ll let you know how it goes! (addit: it’s great for my arthritic finger joints!)

An owl in the free flying bird show.

An owl in the free flying bird show. Alice Springs Desert Park

We also managed to visit Woolworths and Coles a few times, do some cooking and the inevitable washing! One evening at the caravan park they had an astronomer with his telescope giving a talk about the night sky. He was very good – we checked out Jupiter and identified all the constellations that were showing.

This was a live map showing the location of every Royal Flying Doctor plane. I'm just a bit concerned about the gap between Alice and Kalgoorlie - that gap is where we head next!

This was a live map showing the location of every Royal Flying Doctor plane. I’m just a bit concerned about the gap between Alice and Kalgoorlie – that gap is where we head next!

On Wednesday night we camped at Ruth and Bob’s home just outside Alice. Ruth and Bob are friends of my cousin Terry. Thanks for putting us in contact Terry – we had a wonderful time together and look forward to meeting them on the road sometime – they are very experienced remote-area travellers.

Steve, Denise, Ken, Wendy, Bob and Ruth. At Bob and Ruth's home.

Steve, Denise, Ken, Wendy, Bob and Ruth. At Bob and Ruth’s home.

To see the photos from our time in Alice Springs. CLICK HERE.