After a quick lunch in town we joined the second half of our tour, which was to see the sights around Alice Springs.

We started with a visit to Anzac Hill with sweeping views across the township. The flags were all at half mast yesterday to commemorate the passing of the last Anzacv soldier from Alice. Viewing from high gives an interesting perspective of the surroundings. Flat brown land surrounded by hills, most of which are ancient indigenous religious sites.

Next stop was the School of the Air, who have been doing remote learning for over 70 years. Started in 1951 they have been providing education over the airwaves to Australia’s most remote students. Their classroom covers 1.3M square kms in some of the most isolated properties and townships. It’s incredible to think they ran classes via shortwave radio and by mailing it book packs and homework and the students would then mail it all back. The advent of the internet allowed them to broaden the capabilities and they provided all households with satellite internet, computers and webcams.

We visited the Telegraph Station which was the starting point of Alice. To run a Telegraph line from Adelaide to Darwin they needed stations along the way and with Alice being almost exactly halfway it was selected. Ironically when they picked the location there had been recent rains and a body of water was found and the station built alongside. What they didn’t realize was that the water had remained as it was all rocks underneath and it wasn’t a natural spring as they had expected. A township grew around the station which formed the original town of Alice.

Earlier in the day we visited the John Flynn Memorial who founded the Royal Flying Doctor Service. The RFDS provides urgent medical care to the most isolated people in the world. The kids got to go on one of the planes and pretend to be patients, doctors and pilots. They even had a VR setup to experience what it’s like flying on one of the planes on an urgent mission

Our final stop was at a reptile park run by the most enthusiastic and passionate zookeeper I have met in a while. We got to meet Terry the crocodile who seemed placid but scary. The kids then got to hold different lizards and snakes which absolutely enthralled them. Thomas wasn’t entirely convinced though and kept hiding behind Bron. We also got to see a couple of snakes that had just shed their skins and they glistened in the light.