It was a public holiday in Alice Springs today for the Alice Springs Show. We went for a drive in the morning but most of the shops and museums were closed for the public holiday.

One of the museums that was open was the Kookaburra Wreckage Museum. The Kookaburra was a flight manned by Bob Hitchcock and Keith Anderson who flew from Sydney via Adelaide on a rescue mission to find Kingsford Smith who had gone missing while flying through the center of Australia. In hindsight their flight was doomed to fail as they had a broken compass, minimal fuel and no rations. They kept getting warned by flight control to abort but they continued. They crashed near Alice and perished. They scratched their journal on the wing of their plane – which seems to be a common occurrence with early explorers. The wreckage wasn’t found for another 50 years and then moved to the museum.

We then headed to the Alice Show and had a wander through a number of the exhibits. The art works and photography by locals – kids and adults- were quite incredible. There were also submissions for homegrown vegetables as well as baked goods. The kids were particularly excited with the petting zoo. Thomas held a blue tongued lizard while Emily cuddled a guinea pig.

There were a lot of interesting stalls and Matthew was quite excited to get involved in the Police exhibit. He tried on the gas mask and riot shield and even put on the bullet proof vest. The cop challenged him to do 30 pushups while wearing the vest. He could only manage 7.

There weren’t enough taxis on the way back to the hotel so Matthew and I decided to walk. It was a pleasant 40 minute walk, but included walking along the train tracks. Even more interesting was the fact that we walked through the Todd River. The Todd River runs through Alice and separates the township from our hotel. The river is bone dry for most of the year, so much so, that there are no bridges across it. Roads simply go through the river and in the rare instances that the river flows after heavy rains, it is still not deep enough to stop traffic.