Australia, Alice Springs: Eating Oz Animals and Trip to Desert Park

After exploring the northern end of Australia's Northern Territory, we flew to the southern end to visit Alice Springs and the surrounding area. The "red centre" of Oz was the next part of our six-week trip in the country during the final legs of a year away from the UK during 2007. Alice Springs was the only town of any real size in the middle of Australia and was a good place to base ourselves so we could explore part of the desert outback and also some sacred Aboriginal sites such as Uluru, formerly Ayers Rock, and Kata Tjuta, formerly The Olgas.

The town was pretty much hundreds of miles from any major city and was connected to the outside world by a railway line spanning from Darwin in the north to Adelaide in the south; there was also a highway running between the two cities. Since it would have taken 2 days to get to Alice Springs from Darwin by train or by bus, we opted for a quicker mode of transport, the airplane. The flight was only a couple of hours and we flew to Alice Springs on the same flight as Dan's friend, Carl, who had been travelling in the same areas as us for the past week or so. As soon as we arrived in Alice Springs, we collected our luggage and hopped on an airport bus that took us to Desert Palms Resort 20 minutes later. Carl had booked a chalet there for two nights and offered us a free place to stay, which we gladly accepted - thanks Carl!

Our overall impression of the dinner there was that it was either completely overrated or the local animals we ate were just not very tasty

Central Australia was a region of contrasts with spectacular scenery and vibrant colours. The land was semi-arid and hosted some of nature's most fascinating and rare nocturnal mammals and bizarre reptiles, as well as a number of unique trees, plants and flowers. On our last morning in Alice Springs, we visited Alice Springs Desert Park to get a closer look at some of the unusual animals, and you can read more about that when you make your way towards the end of this story.

Alice Springs has a population of around 28,000 people. The town was formed during the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line during the years 1870-1872, and the telegraph provided visibility of the small town to the world, and over the years, the town has become a huge tourist hub for anyone wanting to visit central Australia's incredible sights and landscapes. In addition to amazing natural wonders, the area is renowned for its rich Aboriginal history and culture.

On the first evening in Alice Springs, Dan and Carl headed out to the top of Anzac Hill to take photos of the sunset; Kyle decided to stay back in the room and relax. The sunset was a little disappointing because of a large cloud blocking it, but the colours in the sky were still beautiful to see. At the top of Anzac Hill, three handicapped guys came over to Dan and Carl and began chatting with them. They were very nice and had come to the hill to watch some early Christmas fireworks that were going to be set off that evening. It was good that the guys told Dan and Carl about the fireworks because they had been about to leave Anzac Hill and knew they should keep their eyes in the sky whilst walking to find somewhere to eat dinner.

A nearby pub was where Dan and Carl stopped off for dinner after making their way back into the town centre from Anzac Hill. Dan ate fish and chips and Carl had some kind of lamb dish; the portions were large and very tasty. After finishing the food, they met up with Kyle, who had left Desert Palms to visit the local casino, Lasseter's Casino. We all had a few beers there and ended up staying quite late because of a new card game that neither of us had ever played before - Caribbean Stud Poker. Carl left half an hour before we did to get some sleep, and since the casino was only ten minutes down the road from our resort, we decided to play a few more games of poker before calling it a night and walking back to Desert Palms.

Carl left early the next day to enquire about hiring a car for the day so he could explore the surrounding MacDonnell ranges. In the end, he was unable to hire a car at a decent price at such short notice, so he ended up taking a taxi to the Alice Springs Desert Park. Dan and Kyle decided to walk around the Todd Street main shopping area in the town centre, and worked on this travel journal at a couple of small cafes there. On our way to the town centre from our resort, we stopped at Alice's Secret Travellers Inn to book a 3-day, 2-night camping trip in the desert, which was scheduled to start at 6:00am the following morning. We also booked a night at Alice's because our time with Carl was over; he had to head back to Sydney after a short excursion - no camping for him, though! - to Uluru and that part of central Australia.

In town that afternoon, we also saw the film "Hitman" at the cinema. For dinner, we met up again with Carl at Keller's, a Swiss-Indian restaurant with an unusual and eclectic menu. We shared some starters and a couple of main courses with Carl, with the former being an Indian platter and the latter two curries, a chicken peanut massaman one and pork medallion green one. After dinner, we went back to Lasseter's Casino to drink some beers and play some more cards with Carl, and then went home just after midnight, since we had an early start the next day.

Our tour started from Alice's Secret Travellers Inn when we were picked up there at 6:00am. To get there, we took a taxi from Desert Palms at 5:25am, early enough to take advantage of free breakfast at the Alice's. To be ready when the taxi arrived, we had to wake up at 5:00am, so you can imagine how tired we felt since we hadn't returned from Lasseter's until after midnight the night before. The breakfast wasn't really worth waking up so early because the only milk in the fridge was UHT milk, which we both could hardly stomach. Cereal was pretty much the only option for breakfast, though, so we ate a bowl with some disgusting milk poured over it, milk that does not require a refrigerator and that can be stored on a shelf at room temperature.

After the tour was over, we returned to Alice Springs around 5:30pm and were due to leave the next day on a flight to Adelaide. For our last evening in town, we wanted see a film and then try some local meats for dinner. We chose Overlanders Steakhouse to sample their fare, and we ordered one of The Drovers Blowout meals to share. It included the following items: kumara soup with bread, a mixed starter platter with camel, crocodile, kangaroo and emu meat, and then a choice between beef steak or barramundi (fish) for a main course before pavlova for dessert. Since pavlova was really popular in both Australia and New Zealand, and we hadn't tried it in New Zealand when we were there for a month before travelling to Australia, we thought it would be good to give it a go.

We didn't really like the dessert, the fish that we chose over the beef was bland, and some of the meat in the starter platter had a really gamey taste. Our overall impression of the dinner there was that it was either completely overrated or the local animals we ate were just not very tasty. It was probably down to the restaurant being way more overrated than it should have been; the staff there were rude and they didn't even want to serve us The Drovers Blowout because we arrived there at 8:55pm and the Blowout was only available until 9:00pm. Apparently, the staff there didn't like to go by the actual time, but we managed to explain to them that we still had five minutes in which to order the Australian feast. It was our persistence and the extra work they had to do that probably convinced the cooks to rustle up the worst cuts of meat leftover that day to serve to a couple of tourists.

We were tired from our camping trip by the time we finished dinner and we headed back to Alice's Secret Travellers Inn to get some sleep. We had booked ourselves onto a shuttle bus to Alice Springs Desert Park the following morning, so we packed our things up before going to bed since we had to check out in the morning as well. When we woke up, we had breakfast - more cereal with gross UHT milk poured on top - and caught the 7:00am shuttle to spend a couple of hours at the park before making our way to the airport for our noon flight to Adelaide. Carl had highly recommended the park to us after visiting it a few days earlier and we were eager to see some of the animals there.

The shuttle turned out to be more expensive that we had thought it would be, but we managed to only pay a student price because the driver sympathised with our confused states after being told a different price by the woman running Alice's. The park opened at 7:30am and we had to wait 15 minutes because the shuttle arrived at 7:15am. When we walked inside the park after the gates opened, we were given audio guides that told us about the animals, birds and plants found in the Australian desert; the audio guides were really informative and we were glad to have listened to them whilst walking around that morning.

The park was split into three sections: Woodland, Desert River and Sand Country. Each section had bird aviaries and some of the sections had open animal enclosures or nocturnal houses with animals inside. All of the sections had their own unique trees, plants and flowers, too. To start our tour around the park, we turned on our audio guides and headed to the Woodland section first. The first enclosure we walked into was the kangaroo enclosure. We managed to walk up to some kangaroos and pet them before they hopped away to another part of the fenced-in area.

Despite there being many aviaries in the park, we also spotted many wild birds flying around the park. Some of the birds were making unusual and beautiful noises as they sang their songs of the day. We never expected to see so many brightly coloured birds in such an arid area. As we walked around Alice Springs Desert Park that morning, the temperature started rising rapidly; it must have been 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) by 8:30am!

Dan was really excited to have spotted some zebra finches flying around in the wild, since his brother, Gary, had kept many of them as pets when they grew up together in Essex. To see them in the wild in Australia was a memorable part of our trip, and he wished that Gary would have been there to see them, too. In the nocturnal house inside the park, we saw many reptiles including the famous thorny devil, and we also observed many rare small mammals including the quoll, mala, bilby and hopping mouse, to name a few.

After walking through the other two sections of the park, we rushed to the shuttle to get back to the hostel and wait for our shuttle to the airport. We caught our shuttle to the hostel on time but our shuttle to the airport never showed, so we had to book a taxi instead. Before we knew it, we found ourselves at the airport and in the Qantas airport lounge, enjoying free drinks and snacks at no charge, since we were able to use the lounge for free due to each of us having an appropriate status on a OneWorld Alliance airline.