The Drive to NSW

<Mum>
We had a long 2 days of driving, travelling 1650km from Alice Springs, NT to Broken Hill, NSW.  There is only one sealed road in outback SA so we needed to retrace our steps for part of the way.  We have travelled over 6500km just over 2 weeks.

The kids are now conditioned to the long days of travel and there was almost no fighting - AMAZING!

We spent the night in a free camp - this is almost always a carpark on the side of the highway and it is free - hence the name.

We were lucky at this one, as there were longdrops, whereas sometimes there are no toilets at all!
Surprisingly there have not been many flies around the longdrops but the stench is overpowering!

With no town and no lights nearby, freecamps are a great spot to look at the stars.

<Asha>
In the morning we left just when the sun woke up, but the moon was still up and awake to when it was supposed to be in bed, it was playing with the sun.

....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.



 

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!