So we finally made it to Alice and as a bonus the person who was meant to have the window seat never showed. Matthew and I had the entire row to ourselves and allowed us to spread out a bit.

A unique sight at Alice Springs airport is the parking lot of planes that are not being used. During COVID lockdowns airlines had to decommission a number of aircrafts and needed a dry location near an airport to store them. Alice for the bill and there are hundreds of aircrafts parked in the sunny outback.

After a quick lunch at Loco Burrito, we visited the local Megafauna museum. Deep in Australia’s Red Centre, 180 km northeast of Alice Springs, lies an extraordinary mass grave of ancient Australian animals. Known as the Alcoota fossil beds, the site provides a unique glimpse of Central Australia as it was around 8 million years ago.

Here, open woodlands were home to herds of giant animals. Wombat-like marsupials as large as water buffalo wandered amongst flocks of the largest bird that ever lived, while marsupial carnivores as big as leopards stalked them through the scrub. Flamingos waded at the shores of abundant rivers and lakes, where turtles swam and huge crocodiles lurked beneath the surface.

Somehow, the remains of many of these animals became buried in the silt and mud of an ancient river system. There they lay preserved for 8 million years until they were discovered by chance in the 1950s.

The museum had a number of interactive displays for the kids and videos highlighting how painstaking the process of preservation actually is.