Advertisement
Published: December 9th 2009
Trephina Gorge
The gorge was bone dry but still beautifulDay 9 - Alice Springs
Today we awoke early after having had the best night's sleep in quite some time. We stayed at the Macdonnell Ranges Big 4 caravan park which is the one of the best caravan parks we've ever stayed in. Kevin went to the local Britz car hire office to try to arrange to pick up the extra sleeping bag that the Darwin office had neglected to give us and since one of the poles in the tent had broken he also swapped the for another tent.
We decided to spend the day in Alice and see a few of the attractions there. We took the kids to the School of the Air and saw a recording of a class lesson and a short presentation on how students have done their lessons over the years and how they do them today. We wanted to spend the afternoon driving out to see the Eastern Macdonnells so in order to save time I visited the Olive Pink Botanical Gardens while the others all went to the Royal Flying Doctor Service headquarters. The kids were laughing when they dropped me off because from the carpark, the botanical gardens don't look
very interesting - just dry, boring wattles and gums with dry dusty paths meandering between. But when you take the time to walk along the paths, you can see all the little shrubs and wildflowers in between. Admission is free and there is a little coffee shop on site - well worth a visit if, like me, you're fond of Australian native plants.
At the RFDS, they watched a movie about the RFDS and Rev. John Flynn and then went through the museum which has some of the old two-way radios and a room that simulated the inside of a plane complete with stretcher (and patient!) There is also a flight simulator but it wasn't working the day we were there. The kids really seemed to enjoy it and even Kevin was impressed!
We drove out to Trephina Gorge in the hope of having a swim in the creek but the whole gorge was bone dry. Absolutely stunning scenery though. As we drove back, we stopped at both Emily & Jesse Gaps but again, little or no water in either of them.
In the afternoon, we drove up to Anzac Hill in the middle of town to
watch the sunset - one of the most stunning I've ever seen. The sun slowly drops behind the Western Macdonnell range and baths the horizon in purple and orange. I got to see a small Sturt's Desert Pea in flower in the garden bed near where the car was parked, so I was very excited about that!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.203s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0803s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
