Alice Springs

It's been lovely just spending time here with Fran (and Brian in the evenings), re-acquainting myself with Alice Springs.  The city has grown such a lot but still has a great feel about most of it.  I love all the ghost gums, especially along and through the Todd River bed.  Yesterday we visited the Desert Park which is a multi-award winning complex at the base of the West MacDonnells - absolutely wonderful.  It's a very eco-friendly, low-impact building surrounded by hectares of natural desert/woodland.

There are sections where you walk among birds in their natural environment, lizards, kangaroos, dingoes (in a huge enclosure) and various other interactive displays.  Hard to explain but the best either of us has ever seen.

They have talks by rangers too, and we went to the bird show in the outdoor amphitheatre.  A ranger talks about various birds, mainly raptors, and the birds fly into the arena on cue to show off.  They are amazing!  She was using food to reward their efforts, but the way they did everything on cue was unbelievable.  What a fantastic way to see and learn about these birds - barn owl, black kite, brown falcon, magpie and quite a few others I can't recall at the moment.  There was also a nocturnal display and reptile display, a movie we didn't get to see, cultural tour later in the day ... we spent about 3-4 hours here.