Day 18 – Monday 4 July 2016 – Alice Springs

Showing over and the whole Champion thing under wraps – this morning was more domestic chores – washing. 

Another tour of Alice including Anzac Hill, a visit to Imparja – the television station we have watched for the 16 years we’ve lived at Barongarook, School of the Air, and an opportunity to do a bit of souvenir shopping at a fantastic store in the Todd Mall.  It’s not really until you get on top of Anzac Hill that you realise just how big Alice Springs is.  I will admit I had absolutely no idea.  It’s huge!

Let me share our new concept of Notbats.   Since well before Alice Springs I started noticing “things” in a certain type of tree.  At first I thought they were bats.  But it became apparent after a while that some of these “things” were far too big to be bats.  So we decided they were not.  However, since we hadn’t had an opportunity to pull to the side of the road and investigate them, we still don’t know what they are – except that they are Notbats.  So now every time we see a small mass in a tree we spot it as a Notbat.  The interesting thing is that lots of things can fall into the category of a Notbat.  For example – a nest is not a bat – and so therefore it is a Notbat.  However – not all Notbats are nests.  It’s got to the point now where we don’t want to spoil the mystery and find out exactly what they are.  A bit like not wanting to know how the magic trick is done and just enjoying the show….  That my friend – is a Notbat.

Then it was back to camp to pack up as it’s sadly time to leave Alice.  Both Shane and I have really enjoyed Alice Springs and will definitely come back again some time (hopefully) soon.

I did find it disappointing that everyone had been commenting about the local NT dog show people and how friendly they were, but we were somewhat disappointed as the only people who appeared to be friendly and welcoming (aside from our friends Kerrie & John) were the interstate exhibitors from South Australia & Victoria.  Some of the behaviour of the exhibitors would definitely be frowned upon in Victoria and I couldn’t believe that one person was a steward to the judge while her husband showed in the same ring, and some of the poor sportsmanship shown when the locals didn’t win was really appalling.  But to top the weekend off, after spending an hour or so packing the annexe up tonight we noticed that virtually the whole remaining campers had been invited to a get together at one of the caravans and yet no-one had even so much as approached us to see if we might be interested to join despite this being our first year attending the Alice Springs shows.  

Never mind – we got ourselves organised to leave having completed the dog showing component of our travels, and are looking forward to the next chapter in our adventure.