I went for a ride along the Todd River to the old telegraph station. There's a track the whole way. They I went out past the cultural centre and home, stopping all the way to take photos. A lot of the wildflowers are blooming at the moment and the Sturt desert pea is awesome. The Alice is flat and quite bike friendly with a lot of bike paths. You see quite a few people getting around town on bikes.

C and I went out this afternoon to the Alice Springs Desert Park. It is in a beautiful setting in some desert bush land outside of town nestled against the West MacDonnell Ranges. They have built a series of aviaries full of different species of birds that live in the desert, divided into sections, like desert rivers, grassland and mulga scrub. Some of the aviaries you look into but others you could walk inside and get up close with the birds. There was a pair of dingoes. A ranger told us about them while throwing a few bits of food around for them to collect. I was surprised at how small they are, as they are not very much larger than Beau. And very skinny. The best part was the show about birds of prey. You sit in a small open amphitheatre facing the mountain and a ranger chap brings out the birds one at a time to tell you about them and feed them. The birds fly over the audience only missing the tops of your heads by centimetres. He had a bush stone curlew walk through the aisles collecting food. We saw a whistling kite, a black kite, magpie, barn owl, frogmouth and a falcon.

The major event of the day was J back in hospital again. A stayed home with him all day but he just got worse until he couldn't swallow again. Temp 39.3 and feeling miserable. Anyway, it's tonsillitis again and so in to Alice Springs hospital. He had some IV fluid, ABs and steroid in EM and already felt much better. He's there now.

Driving J up to the hospital and running around a bit in the town on a Sat night was unsettling. There is a strong police presence here. There is a cop stationed outside the front door of every bottle shop all the time. We saw police out and about, sometimes with lights flashing. At least one of the patient's at the hospital was a woman who looked beaten up. I suspect there is some local trouble in this town.