The morning started with a quick check up for Debbie at the chiro again – and things were seeming much better, which was great to hear!
We headed out to the Alice Springs Desert Park, planning to spend most (all) of the morning there. We knew there was just so much to see, and we also know how much the kids like the Reptile Park back home. We made it there in time for the 10am bird show, which was just incredible! The main ranger giving the talk presented this huge array of local native birds who would just fly into the amphitheater as he spoke about them – obviously there were other keepers who were releasing the birds at just the right time, but they were all free-flying, which was amazing to see. We learnt so much about different birds, and it was a great chance to put some names and facts to birds that we’d seen over the last couple of days.
At the end of the presentation, we had a chance to hold a Barn Owl and pose for photos – and so we decided to all take that up, and it was so wonderful. It’s such an incredibly beautiful bird!
We then spent the next couple of hours walking around the park looking at all the different displays and animals. There were plenty of birds, and then a great series of nocturnal and diurnal (day time) displays of different animals. Things were really wonderfully spread apart throughout the park, so the walks between each section were just like doing a bush/desert walk along a track. And the whole day was spent with the MacDonnell Ranges (Tjoritja) as a backdrop, which was beautiful.
After some lunch, we headed across to the Royal Flying Doctors Service to visit their tourist facility. I’d been looking forward to visiting the RFDS for a while – I’ve always loved and been intrigued by the amazing service they provide to rural and regional Australia. And having spent a bunch of years working on and maintaining their complex network in the mid 2000s (as part of my role at Telstra), I’ve always felt a bit of a connection to RFDS.
We had a bit of time before the brief tour started on the half hour, so we started to look through the museum section. There was a great outline of the planes they’ve used over the years, along with the changes in the medical supplies from the 50s through to today. When the tour kicked off, we were introduced to the RFDS overall, and the guide talked through the planes that were in the sky at that exact moment (they have the live flights on a screen in the foyer). We then watched a short documentary narrated by a hologram of Rev John Flynn, who took us on a detailed historic timeline of the Royal Flying Doctors Service – really informative and enjoyable.
After the video, we headed to the other side of the facility where they had a replica RFDS aircraft that you could sit in, and the kids loved sitting in the cockpit. We also all had a turn at a virtual reality experience. There were two RFDS stories that you could watch: one from the perspective of and telling the story of an RFDS pilot, and the other telling the story of a patient. Both were amazing to watch on their own, but wearing a virtual reality headset and being immersed in it was pretty brilliant.
Tonight we headed just a short walk down the road to the Alice Springs Brewing Co. for some pizza (and for me to try their beers). It was a really nice and relaxed night there – although, incredibly busy for a Tuesday night! The kids had a great time playing on the lawn with a bunch of other kids, and it was only at the end we found out those kids were some School of the Air kids who were having their in-school week that we’d heard about only yesterday! Such a fun connection for the kids to make.
Tomorrow, it’s back on the road for a couple of back to back long drives – we’ll be in Katherine by Thursday evening, some 1200km away!
