Bay to Bay: A Town Called Alice

Our last stop on our winter holiday was Alice Springs. On our way there we saw some wild camels and horses, and stopped at a roadhouse at Stuart Wells Spring to see Dinky the Singing Dingo. This is a dingo (one of Australia's wild dogs) that has been domesticated since he was a pup, and has the talent to play the piano and sing along to someone else playing the piano. The dingo jumps up onto the keyboard and will howl along with the piano player, and if no one is playing he will bang the keys by himself and howl along. It's one of those things you just have to stop and see!

http://www.australiantraveller.com/index.cfm?page_id=1234
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpO5yZ71BNE

Alice Springs was a very nice town, bigger than I thought, and located in the midst of the very scenic MacDonnell Ranges. This was our last night in the camper van, I think we were all looking forward to a hotel room with an ensuite for the last night of our holiday! In the morning we headed west through the ranges to the Alice Springs Desert Park, which was a beautifully laid out wilderness park. There were a few indoor displays, and many out of doors, and the park was divided into the four main desert environs with the associated animals. We were able to see a demonstration on birds of prey, then wander around the park on our own. There were a few bird enclosures where we were able to walk through and see the birds all around us. We must have spent four hours there and the time just flew by.

http://www.alicespringsdesertpark.com.au/

We drove out further west and had our lunch at Simpson's Gap, where there is a water hole at a narrow gap in the ranges. The rest of the corresponding river was a sandy riverbed, so we had fun just running around on the sand.

We stopped at Anzac Hill when we got back to town and had a look from the top; it's one of the highest points in the town, and the views are spectacular.

We had to return the campervan that afternoon, so after checking in at the hotel, John dropped us off at the Alice Springs Telegraph Station Historical Precinct, while he drove to the Britz office and he would walk back to the station to meet us. We got there in time for a tour, which was very interesting. The telegraph station is the site of the first settlement in Alice Springs, and features the original buildings and equipment of the telegraph station built in 1871. The townsite itself was surveyed in 1880. The town is named after the Alice Spring permanent waterhole, which was named after Alice Todd, the wife of the telegraph line's construction manager. John turned up halfway through the tour, and at the end we all walked back to Alice Springs along the Todd River (dry, sandy riverbed), about 4 km.