Our time in Alice Springs has been fairly busy. We have been to the Desert Park where we saw a Black-Breasted Buzzard crack open an emu egg with a rock in its beak. A park ranger took us on a walk where she explained how the different plants survive, and how the Aborigines use some of them for food and medicine.
The kids really enjoyed visiting the School of the Air. It currently has 169 students from preschool to year 8. The area it covers is 1.3 million square kilometres.
Today we drove to Arltunga, 100km east of Alice Springs. 40 km were on a very badly corrugated, unsealed road, so that even Captain Feathersword couldn't be heard as the car was rattling so much. Arltunga was a community of around 300 people in the late 1800s, and again in the 1930s. People would walk 600km from Oodnadatta with a wheelbarrow containing their possessions to search for rubies, and later gold. We hiked to a disused mine that had been used in the 1930s. Notice our t-shirts- thanks Grandma!
Now the stone buildings are ruins and almost no one lives there. A beautiful couple, who are gold miners, do still live there and showed us the old battery that still works. It was used to crush quartzite. The miners would then sift through the sand to find the gold flecks. The kids had a go at the sifting and managed to find a little bit of real gold, plus lots of fools' gold.
The highlight for me was definitely the sunset camel trek. Except for a slightly lurchy start and bandy legs afterwards, it was fantastic. We were also able to give the camels their hay after their walk.
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