Alice Springs, NT

<Rémi>
We travelled from Uluru to Alice Springs, 464km. 

We stopped about half way at a roadhouse that had a giant echidna and a giant frill-neck lizard.

We are staying at a great caravan park which has 3 pools, 2 adventure playgrounds, 2 jumping pillows, lots of paths for scootering, its own observatory and BMX track!


Mum likes the park too as it has 9 washing machines and about 300m of washing lines!



<Kian>

We visited the Alice Springs Desert Park which is like a zoo for Central Australian desert animals and plants.

The park is split into the 3 different types of desert habitats: - Woodland, Desert Rivers and Sand Country.  Each has different animals and different plants supporting the animals.
We watched a bird show and saw lots of birds including:- Whistling and Black Kites, Barn Owl (looked just like Hedwig), Spinifex Pigeons, Bush-stone Curlew, Tawny Frogmouth owl, Pink & Grey Galah, Magpie and a Brown Falcon.  The show was exciting and informative.  Some photos of the birds are below.

Barn Owl



Bush Stone Curlew



Spinifex Pigeons

Brown Falcon

Brown Falcon

Whistling Kite

 

In the nocturnal house we saw lots of desert reptiles such as snakes, spiders and the thorny devil as well as mammals like bilbies and spinifex hopping mice.  Nocturnal means active at night and diurnal means active in the day.  Most desert animals are nocturnal.

 

To take a drink thorny devils only need to stand in a puddle of water.  Their scales move the water along channels and into their mouth.  One of the favourite foods of the thorny devil is piss ants!

One of my favourite birds was the Orange Chat - anyone know why?

The whole family had a close encounter with a wedge tail eagle named LaBelle.

We also learned about the plants in each of the desert environments and how the aboriginal people use these plants in their culture.

The Desert Park was good and quite educational, even though we are supposed to be on holidays!




<Rémi>

Dad & I visited the National Road Transport Hall of Fame.  It is massive with lots of trucks and a separate section devoted entirely to Kenworth trucks.
Some of the vehicles were very old - the model T Ford from the 1920's - and some were less than a year old. 
I was allowed to climb up to the cab of the trucks, but it was a rather difficult climb on most of them because the first step was at about chest height and the handles are very high.  Here are some photos of some of the vehicles that I saw.

They even had an emu made of truck parts!