Sydney Monday 17th February

Posted byvwhitesidePosted inUncategorized

Time to leave the Northern Territory today and travel to Sydney

The hotel’s bedraggled peacock having a morning sip.
On the way to the airport we had a really interesting visit to the Alice Springs School of the Air.
The school was the inspiration of Adelaide Miethke and was opened in 1951. She saw what Pastor John Flynn was achieving with his Flying Doctor initiative and thought the same ideas could be applied to education for those children who couldn’t get to a school.
The school does superb work.
The pupils’ work on a project “Lest We Forget”.
They were sent the poppies and returned a photo of themselves in a field of Poppies.

Until 2005 the education was delivered to children isolated in the outback using mail and radio.

Since then modern technology has been used. Library books and art materials are still sent by mail.
We saw the live interaction between this teacher and a couple of the pupils during a lesson.
This map illustrates the vastness of Australia by superimposing Europe.
With enormous cattle stations there is real isolation for children.
The pupils come together for a week 4 times each year. This may be the only time they see others their own age.
Next it was on to visit the Royal Flying Doctor Service Alice Springs control centre.
After an excellent holographic presentation on the history and development of the service we were able to check out the type of plane currently in use.
There are over 70 of these planes in use throughout Australia.

Next stop was Alice Springs Airport for our flight to Sydney. A number of flies seemed keen to travel with us!

Qantas lunches seem to be either 3 mini pies or 3 mini filled dumplings.
We prefer the pies, we have had really tasty pies in Australia.
After a good flight we crawled through Sydney rush hour traffic to our hotel.
I love these WRONG WAY signs we see everywhere.
We made it here around 6.30pm. Another time change; we are now back to being 11 hours ahead of you.
The view of Sydney Harbour Bridge from our bedroom.

We ate at a nearby Italian restaurant and found half of the tour group there. It is early to bed tonight. We have gone back one and a half hours but need to be up well before seven in the morning. It is going to feel like 5.30am! We will be setting off for a city tour at 8am. We are crossing paths with another Distant Journeys tour group, also on a city tour in the morning. It is going to be a very busy breakfast.

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