It became very windy overnight, so Greg had to attach the anti-flap supports early this morning, and we all ended up in the double bed together - not sure how much sleep we all got.

Kicked off the day with a visit to the Alice Springs Desert Park. It's not far from Alice Springs and once we purchased our family pass + close encounter with an eagle pass we got our audio guides and off we went to walk around the well-signposted park: there were lots of bird exhibits; information about the flora and how the indigenous used various plants for food and medicinal purposes; and also few animal exhibits. The nocturnal house was the highlight for all of us, as well as Araura 'Rory' the Wedge-Tailed Eagle, with whom we had a close encounter!

We headed back to Town for some lunch and Renee and Mum searched high & low for a birthday present for Eamon - his Birthday's in 6 days time! We then raced to Simpson's Gap, which is the closest scenic 'gap' in the West MacDonnell Ranges from Alice. At dawn or dusk, Simpson's gap is renowned as a place to see Black-footed Rock-wallabies along the gap's short walking track and we were not disappointed as we saw about 10 of them which was a great surprise - the gap itself was also great.

It was about 5pm, and we had to be quick to fit in our planned Simpson's Gap bike ride. It's actually a 34km ride if you go from Simpson's Gap to Flynn's Grave return, but we were never going to attempt that, so we did 6km's out and 6km's back, so a good 1 hour ride - it's nice and wide and flat and very pleasant around sunset.

Great day and looking forward to the Henley-on-Todd Regatta tomorrow.