Alice Springs

I am now back in Alice Springs after my Uluru trip. I have two days here, and so I decided to spend today wandering around, and tomorrow I have booked a day trip to the Western MacDonnell mountain ranges. I really like Alice; when I step outside of my hostel the surrounding environment is nice and familiar, even if it does have black-footed wallabies in the rocky hills.

I woke up a little late and decided to go to the Alice Springs Reptile Centre, which I had heard good things about. I absolutely LOVED it. The setups were great, and I really enjoyed a lot of the signs.

This is a black-headed python. It is believed that their head is black so they can warm themselves up quickly by simply sticking their head out of their burrow. The black colour helps the brain warm up very fast, and so they don't need much time to bask to become active.

And this is the world's most venomous snake, the Inland Taipan. It is found in central Australia. Note that there are no flashy colours, no rattles, nothing. Just a simple black/brown snake that can KILL YOU. Its fangs are only millimeters long, though, so jeans are enough to thwart it. Take that, Inland Taipan.


Since I didn't get any pictures of them in Kakadu, here are two young frilled lizards. These are the same size as the ones we saw, and I found out today that they are just juveniles. You can see where the frill opens up.

Okay, so these guys are my absolute favourites and I have tons of pictures of them. I didn't see any in the wild, which sucks. But anyway, these are awesome animals. It's like nature said, "Hey, Australia, we have this niche we'd like you to fill for an animal living in a hot, dry climate whose entire diet is comprised solely of small ants. It should preferably be round-ish and have spikes." And Australia said, "All right!" and totally went overboard with the spike thing.


These are thorny devils, who have the awesome Latin name of Moloch horridus even though they are really sweet and don't deserve it. When they walk it is slow and jerky and they hold their tails up really high in the air. SO CUTE.


In the back of the thorny devil enclosure was an adult frilled lizard. This thing was HUGE. It wasn't as long as an iguana, but the head was definitely the same size. Just imagine that thing getting angry and suddenly hissing at you with its frill wide open. Oh no!

After the Reptile Centre I went to go book my tour for tomorrow, which I did in town. Mom asked for some pictures of the pedestrian mall area, so here are some!


After that I went to the Alice Springs Desert Park, which is like a really, really small Desert Museum. It was very nice, though. They had tons of birds flying around and a fantastic nocturnal house with a lot of animals on display that you would never see otherwise. I got this great shot of a galah as I was walking; you can't see in this small version but it's looking up in a very cute manner.

Also, there were wildflowers on the path.


I got back to the hostel around 4:30, and I took a shower and just hung out wishing I could watch the new Office episode for an hour, then decided to get some dinner. I was walking around the town area when I saw a sign for Keller's Swiss, Indian, and Australian Restaurant. The fact that all of these foods had been brought together was intriguing, but I was certainly not dressed well enough and was not quite willing to pay over $20 for something on a menu that contained kangaroo vindaloo (although it does have a nice sound to it), and got something cheap at a small cafe instead.

Tomorrow I am off to see the rare Palm Cabbage, or something. This gorge I'm going to is famous for having this plant that is only found in that gorge and nowhere else in the world, so I hope it's interesting.