....More Alice Springs

Alice Springs has lots of interesting things to do and see

<Kian>

We visited the School of the Air.
This is a school where kids from a long way away use their computers to do school classes.  They don't have to leave home to go to school, they just do it wherever they live like on cattle stations or National Parks.
The teachers have studios to teach from, which are set up with computers and cameras so that the kids can see  what the teacher is doing and hear what they are saying.  It is a bit like Skype.
The school of the air in Alice Springs covers the remote areas of NT, some Qld, some WA and some SA.  It has 138 students from Kindy to year 9 and 12 teachers.
We watched lessons of year 4 maths, year 5 English and the kindy teacher reading a story to her kids.


The classroom studio is in the background



Teacher in the studio

<Asha>
We went to feed the wallabies. (Kian:  Black footed Rock Wallabies)
In the evening, the they come down from the hills behind our caravan park.  We fed them special wallaby food from a bag.

 

 

We even got to pat some.  They were very soft and cuddly, but they have sharp claws.  Their sharp claws hurt when they scratched and held my hand.

 

 

 

One of the mummy wallabies had a joey in her pouch.




<Rémi>
Bike Ride to Simpson's Gap

On Anzac Day we rode our bikes from Alice Springs to Simpson's Gap in the West MacDonnell Ranges.

It was 17km out to Simpson's gap so we started early, at about 8am, to avoid the heat of the day.

 

During the ride we crossed a lot of floodways and bridges and there were a few small hills.  We arrived at Simpson's Gap just before 10am - we had ridden just over 8.5km per hour.
Simposon's Gap is where there is a gap in the rocky range.  The landscape is a desert river with trees growing within the dry riverbed.  At the gap there is a waterhole for swimming.















 





We were lucky as Dad hitched a lift back to Alice with a bus of school students on camp.  He brought the car back to collect us so we didn't need to ride the return leg.

I enjoyed the ride.  Even though it was much further than the ride at Uluru, it was not any more tiring and took us about the same time.



<Zeke>
In Alice Springs we went to the Reptile Centre.
They have reptiles from the Northern Territory like a fresh water crocodile, a salty, venomous and non-venomous snakes, goannas, skinks, turtles, bearded dragons & thorny devils.

the saltwater croc was 3.3m long, which is reasonably small for a salty.

Everyone had a hold of the bearded dragon and the skink.

Then everyone had a hold of the olive python!!!  It was heavy and smooth, especially underneath.  It was about 2.5m long.

 

 

 

I love reptiles and have always wanted to hold a snake so I had a great time at the reptile centre. 

<Kian>
We drove out to the West MacDonnell Ranges.  We saw whistling kites soaring above the range.
Dad had a camel burger for lunch - made from real camel meat!

We took a walk to a natural waterhole called Ormiston Gorge.  We all (except Mum - she was photographer) had a swim in our clothes.  The water hole was very deep and the water was very cold.