We found Alice Springs to be a nice small town. It is smack dab in the middle of the country of Australia and the only town that can claim it is the closest to every beach and coastline in Australia! The town started out as an outback outpost for the Overland Telegraph Line and over the next 125 years slowly grew into a small town. It has a permanent watersource by the bed of the normally dry Todd River, and thus it has major services and conviences of any small town. The Macdonnell mountain range runs westword alongside the town making for nice scenery and hiking around the area. There are very strong ties with the local Aboriginal tribes and communites. Kim and I really enjoyed learning about their culture, heritage, and spent time appreciating their artwork and music.
Alice Springs is also home to an interesting service called the Royal Flying Doctor. This operates airflights and services to remote isolated communites in the outback. It also has The School of the Air, which is an educational system that is unique to Australia and brodcasts lessons to children who are living on remote villages and stations.
We visited the Alice Springs Reptile Center which has a huge colleciton of snakes, lizards, and even a salt water crocodille. They have over a 100 types of reptiles and 40 different species and a fossil cave room, providing a comprehensive and educational overview of the reptiles within the Northern Territory.
Two Australian thorny devils. This is a remarkable, though small, lizard. The Thorny Devil's colouration can adapt to its surroundings and camoflauge itself quite well, thus making it hard to see. Despite their fierce appearance and razor sharp thorns, these are slow-moving and harmless lizards. Their diet consits of the many species of ants which occur in the arid desert.
The Australian Frilled Lizard. When frightened or to scare off predators, this lizard rears on its hind legs, spreads an enormous frill out on each side of its neck, opens its mouth, and hisses. I didn't get to see this unfourtanety but it is still one cool looking creature.
We went to an awesome digeridoo performance called the Sounds of Starlight. It was owned and operated by the digerdoo performer Andrew Langford. It was a spellbinding visual journey through the ancient land forms, history and space of Australia's outback with amazing images and photos. The musical journey takes you from the heart of the desert to beyond the stars with dynamic rhythms as the didgeridoo creates the pulse for the visual images. After the show, people were invited to come onstage and jam. Here Caroline is playing the didj with Andrew, and Mike and Patrick are on the djembe playing percussion.
Local Aboriginal paintings from Alice Springs artists.
After two relaxing days at Alice Springs, we boarded a plane and headed off to Cairns for our next Australian adventure- Tropical North Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef. Here you can see the vast arid land below from our flight!
