Alice Springs Reptile Centre and Museum

These blog entries are all a big behind as I have been out of phone range for a couple of days.

On the 15/7/2011 we went to the Alice Springs Reptile centre and we were actually pretty pleasantly surprised by what we discovered there. It simply looked like a signposted home from the outside, in the middle of a normal suburban street. But when we got inside it was four or so rooms (And an outdoor area) of lizards, snakes, turtles and a big saltwater croc. It was very cheap too I think it was $12 each which is just awesome! (it was free for Zac).

We slowly walked through all of the rooms marvelling over the variety of desert lizards espcially the really spikey ones. We went into the underwater viewing area and had a peek at the croc but he didnt move at all. You could see him in such detail though because he was practically up against the glass. Zachery was very impressed. We then got called inside for a reptile show.

A young woman went up the front of the room and showed us a huge variety of snakes and lizards. She had one enormous snake that she let everyone have a hold of. She lined all the children up on the stage (Zac included) and let the snake start from one end and slither accross all of them to the other end of the line. Zac was absolutely in his element and shocked everyone with how interested he was. We then had to (at Zacs request) stay back after the show so he could hold each of the lizards and ... sort of voilate an unsuspecting blue tongue lizard. The lizard was kissing Zac with his long tongue so Zac decided to share the love and licked the lizards tongue... haha. Ew!

It was such a fantastic experience! Zachery loved it and how "hands on" he was able to be. I highly reccomend it to anyone going through Alice Springs.

Awesome spikey lizard

I couldnt get a good photo of Zac with the snake as I was too far back because there were just so many people there.

Then we went to the local museum. Which also surprised us! It wasnt as big as a city museum but it was just as beautiful and had a wonderful variety of local information and artifacts. There were dinosaur bones, animal bones from all the animals found in the desert and many more. There was alot of extrememly interesting information on Ted Strehlow, a man who spent years and years with aboriginal tribes and learnt an unimaginable amount about their cultural practices and lifestyle. His researcha nd information is so extensive and so personal to the tribes he pertained it from that a huge majority of it cant even be shared for privacy reasons. There are annual conferences on the information and what can be released while still remaining sensitive to the aboriginal people and their practices. There is actually a book and a movie on it that I intend on reading/viewing when we get to Darwin if I can find it.

We seen some fantastic rocks that came from comets (I think thats what they are called... the ones that hit the earth and cause craters?) we seen pictures and models of craters aswell. There was alot of information on outer space etc. Zac was really tired by this point though so I didn't get to slow down and read as much as I would have liked to, due to a grumpy kiddie! But thats ok, I guess its a good reason to come back again?  :-)