Alice Springs

Sat 26 & Sun 27 June - Day 7 & 8

Smashing weekend at Alice Springs - so many fabulous things to do and yep we could easily have stayed 2 more nights. Pleased we will come back through here on another trip next year. Beautiful sunrise on the MacDonnells first thing - greatway to start the day after sprinkles the night before.

Ends up we landed at Alice on the 20th Anniversary of the Beanie Festival - absolutely brilliant ! Extraordinary textiles used in the beanies with every variety you could possible think of with some amazing local Aboriginal Women creating felted beanies as below. The colours were stunning and sadly none seemd to suit me....i love my hats and could easily have walked out with the lot! Kids loved it (yay - didn't know how'd we go there...) as did Stu and we all walked out very fashionably attired. 

6500 Beanies from all over Australia from Indigenous and non Indigenous artists with almost 1800 sold on the first day....plus amazing objectives of creating reconcilliation as well as developing fine arts and entrepreneurealskills and reducing poverty...the websites is fabulous too. Simply smasing start to the day and an incredibly energising experience!! 

Kids were keen to go to the Alice Springs Reptile Centre too - amazing time with many types of snakes on display as well as lizards, perenti and geckos plus an really informative hands on talk with one of the keepers. Girls had fun with some lizards and Huges, Stu and Eva all had a go at holding an Olive Python.

Beautiful sunset after a gorgeous sunrise for our first day in Alice.

Day 2 in Alice took us out to visit the Ghan Museum and the Road Transport Hall of Fame. The Ghan Museum was fabulous with so much pictorial history of the construction of the Ghan Railway line as well as loads of info on the early Cameleers in outback NT. Right next door was the Road Transport HOF.....and wowsers did we all have a ball here. Huges and Stu were capivated as we viewed shed after shed of transport memorabilia as well as many trucks that have been donated by transport families over the years.

The Kenworth Hall of Fame was extraordinary with trucks from the 1950's through to 2015! Millions of dollars of trucks on display in immaculate if not new condition.

Whilst the boys went back to the Hall of Fame after lunch the girls and I went to the RFDS Base to do a Tour. Learnt loads about Rev John Flynn and his vision to provide medical services to all Australian.....a favourite place for me to go as this was a pipedream for me during my nursing days before I met the boyf ! It was brilliant and amazing to learn of the number of bases over Australia as well as the primary health care they provide to over 235,000 Australian by way of clinic visits and health clinics.

And then the rain decided to roll in again over the MacDonnells that arvo ....we saw many people pulling over to the side of the road to take photos of the fog haze lowering itself onto the range...lots of truckies in particular - which made me think it must be unusual event !! The rain and drizzle is following us everywhere !! At least its not 1 or 2 deg like home is currently experiencing .....