A desert wiffin a desert

Yesterday I had the morning off from the hotel, so, at Alison's recommendation, I hoofed it over to the Alice Springs Desert Park. Now, as a brief side note, I have been using Bill Bryson's book In a Sunburned Country as a travel bible; everything I do or plan to do, I check to see if Mr. Bryson did it, too, and to see if he had any pithy remarks about it. This is the conversation he had with his travel companion, Allan, on their arrival in the Alice:

"And what is there to do for two days in Alice Springs?"
"Quite a lot," I said encouragingly, and pulled out a brochure I had taken from a rack in the motel. I flipped through it. "There's the Alice Springs Desert Park, for one thing."
He inclined his head a fraction. "What's that?"
"It's a nature reserve where they carefully recreated a desert environment."
"In the desert?"
"Yes."
"They've recreated a desert in the desert? Have I got that right?"
"Yes."
"And you pay money for this?"
"Yes."
He nodded contemplatively. "What else?"

All hilarity aside, though, it was fantastic park. I got there just in time for the "Birds of Prey" show (as did dozens and dozens of other people: school kids, tour groups, etc.). It was incredible! There were galahs, black kites, whistling kites, a black breasted buzzard, an owl, butcher birds and an uninvited eagle circling off in the distance. The buzzard was definitely the coolest; it's one of two birds in the world that instinctively uses tools to eat. When it finds an emu egg, it picks up a stone in its beak and hurls it as hard as it can against the egg until it cracks and it can eat the insides. Very cool.

As soon as the bird show was over, I ran over to the nocturnal house to beat the crowds. There were so many animals! I saw bilbies, malas, quolls and countless other desert rats and marsupials. And the reptiles! Tons of snakes, skinks, legless lizards, thorny devils and anything else you can imagine. I probably spent an hour in there, visiting all of the animals over and over again. They didn't have an echidna on display, which was a bummer, but apparently there's one living in the back yard, so maybe, if I bide my time, I'll get to see one in the wild.

After the nocturnal house, I wandered around and found the kangaroo and emu paddocks. I actually got to walk around with the kangaroos, but they were pretty lethargic and wouldn't come say hi. But the fact that I was allowed into their pen is probably a point for the cute and cuddly, yeah? I don't know. The emus were separated from the path by a couple of fences, but it was still neat to see them. I think I am going to try to find some in the wild when I am down in South Australia, 'cause apparently that's where they all hang out.

In hindsight, I really only went to look at the animals, and didn't spend to much time in the "environment" parts. But it was still really cool. Probably would have been nice to go there with company, but what can you do, eh?

The worst part is that as soon as i turned on my camera, the low battery light flashed, so I only ended up with a couple of pictures of the kangaroos and maybe one or two of the emus. Ah well.

Peace.