I woke up uncomfortably early around 5am because I had to catch a 7:15am flight to Alice Springs. I decided not to mess around with the bus because I did not have a metro card for Adelaide, and I called an Uber. There was a guy sitting outside the hostel also trying to get to the airport, and he asked if he could join me, and I welcomed him to hop in. He was heading to the Gold Coast to go surfing, but he said that he was born in Alice Springs, which was a fun coincidence. He warned me to "keep my wits about me." We got to the Airport pretty quickly as it is only about ten minutes away from the city center, and the guy offered to chip in for the ride, I told him he didn't need to, and he gave me A$10, which was very generous because the ride was only A$15.

There is no way to get a paper boarding pass when flying Qantas at the self check-in kiosks at the airport, so I was forced to check in on my phone. I was a bit anxious because my flight did not appear on the departure board, but I was able to check in without a problem. After going through security, I was selected for additional screening, they wanted to swab my bags for explosives. It seems I have been selected for additional screening at every opportunity.

I made it to the gate with plenty of time to spare (and yes, the gate existed even if the flight was not on the departure board). The flight was scheduled for a 7:15am departure and we did not even board until 6:55am. It was a small plane (an Embraer 190) and it was only about half full. One interesting thing to note is that no form of identification was checked at any point in time through the airport, and I did not need to ever show a boarding pass to go through security. Also, I was able to go through security with a full water bottle, because there isn't a volume limit for liquids on domestic flights in Australia.

It was a short 2-hour flight to Alice Springs. Alice Springs is in the Northern Territory, and there is a one-hour time zone from South Australia, so we landed just around 8:30am. I was surprised to see how green it was outside, as I was expecting Alice Springs to be barren.

Considering how small the Alice Springs airport is, it took a remarkably long time for bags to come off the carousel. After collecting my belongings I was met by a driver from Emu Run tours, who operate the shuttle from Alice Springs airport to the city. The shuttle costs A$19, and a taxi will end up costing around A$50 for the short fifteen minute drive into the city, so the shuttle was the obvious choice, and it was very nice for the driver to wait for me. As we drove in, she explained that there had been an unusually high amount of rain thus far this year, and that's why it was so green, but typically you wouldn't see this in Alice Springs.

While driving we crossed the Todd river, which runs through Alice Springs. The river spends most of the year completely dry, only flowing if there is a lot of rain. We did drive past a spot where there was a little puddle in the river bed. Amusingly, there is a "boat" race held annually called the Henley-on-Todd Regatta, where participants build boats with no bottoms and run a-la the Flintstones, and where they build pirate/viking ships on top of cars and have a battle with flour bombs.

The shuttle dropped me right at my hostel, but it was not even 9:30am so it was too early to check in. I called and they told me the code to open the door, and I dropped off my bags and headed for a walk into the city. It was nice and cool, only 88 degrees. I walked about ten minutes to a hair salon called Hair at the Memo to get a haircut. I had wanted to get one in Adelaide but ran out of time, and it also looked like the barber shops in Adelaide were a bit pricy. I was pleasantly surprised that the haircut only cost A$30, and I thought the woman did a decent job, although she didn't really clean off the back of my neck or my forehead after finishing and rushing me out the door.

I went down the street to the visitors centre for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, which is an air medical service providing primary and emergency care to people all throughout rural Australia. The museum discussed the founding and history of the RFDS, and there was even an old medical aircraft that visitors could go inside. They now have a fleet of more than 79 aircraft all over Australia, with various bases throughout the Outback, including in Alice Springs.

I then walked closer to the city center. I had been carrying my laptop with me, hoping to find somewhere to sit with wifi and catch up on some blogs. I ended up going to Gloria Jean's, an Australian coffee chain, inside Yeprenye Shopping Centre, a large indoor mall in the center of Alice Springs. The AC was pumped really high, it felt cooler than 70 degrees inside, meanwhile the temperature outside was pushing 100. I sat and worked for about two hours to get my Kangaroo Island blogs uploaded.

Around 1:30pm I was getting hungry, so I headed inside the mall in search of food. I went to Miyabi, a conveyor sushi restaurant, and was pleasently surprised to find it was not too expensive and the food was very good.

After lunch it was incredibly hot outside but I still wanted to explore Alice Springs, so I walked down to Todd Mall, an outdoor shopping street that is theoretically the main hotspot in the city. Perhaps it was too hot for people to be outside, but it seemed pretty empty. There was only a handfull of Aboriginals sitting around and hanging out. As an aside, there were tons of Aboriginals in Alice Springs, I think at least 60% of people I saw were Aboriginal, even though they only make up about 30% of the population of the city. It is pretty interesting because their facial features are incredibly different from Europeans.

I walked back to the hostel, Alice Secret Traveler's Inn, because it was time to check in. At check in, the woman told me that I should not walk around after dark because it is not safe, something that I had not heard about Alice Springs, but I googled it and it does seem that people report a lot of unsafe incidents in Alice Springs.

I had booked a sunset tour of the Kangaroo Sanctuary, so I headed to a different hostel about five minutes away to get picked up by a bus that would take us there. Visitors are only allowed at the Sanctuary at sunset, three days a week, and only a single bus can go. The sanctuary is run by Brolga, a very nice Australian man. Brolga is his nickname, a brolga is a tall bird, and he is very tall and skinny. Brolga considers himself a "kangaroo mom" because he raises joeys that are found inside of dead kangaroos on the side of the road. Like deer in the US, tons of kangaroos die because they are hit by cars. There is not a lot of grass in the outback, but condensation from passing vehicles allows grass to grow by the side of the highway, and kangaroos come to eat it. They also typically feed at night, and get stunned by headlights, so you can see how this creates an issue. Unlike deer, kangaroos are marsupials, so mothers carry babies in their pouches, and the pouches are lined with strong muscles, so joeys can often survive even if the mother dies. Because it is so green, there are fewer kangaroos getting hit as of late, because they don't need to venture near roads to find food.

Brolga said that all throughout Australia there are people who help to raise orphaned joeys, and once they are around 14-months old they get released back in the wild. In Alice Springs alone, there are more than a dozen people who raise orphaned joeys, and there are more than 350 orphaned joeys who are brought to Alice Springs each year. Brolga is currently caring for 17 or so. His main objective was to teach people that if they see a dead kangaroo on the side of the road, they should always pull over to check if it is a female with a live joey in her pouch, and that people should always have a pillowcase in their car, because they can use that pillowcase as a makeshift pouch, and bring the joey to the nearest town to find someone who raises orphaned joeys. Brolga started off as a zookeeper, and then a tour guide, but after recognizing that no one was checking dead kangaroos for joeys, he decided to start his sanctuary. All kangaroos he raises need to be released into the wild because they cannot be kept as pets, but he has a special permit to operate a sanctuary, so he can keep injured kangaroos who won't survive in the wild on his 200-acre plot.

We went for a walk through the sanctuary, and got to take turns holding Mindy and Arthur, two joeys that Brolga was currently caring for. They were both eight months old, and once they turn nine they will be left in a different area to de-humanize them so they are ready to go back into the wild. Aboriginal peoples are permitted to hunt kangaroos for food, so the kangaroos need to lose any affinity for humans so they can avoid hunters. Through the sanctuary we encountered many kangaroos that for various reasons would not survive in the wild. Typically this is an injury that would make it so they cannot outrun dingoes, which are the natural predator of the kangaroo.

It is too hot during the day, so kangaroos mostly rest, and just before sunset they start to become active, that's why Brolga only operates sunset tours. Kangaroos will each sit under their own tree, and they know to sit on the west side of the tree in the morning and on the east side of the tree in the evening. They also know that the soil on the top of the ground is hotter, so they dig little divets to lie in which Brolga called "kangaroo beds." As we approached kangaroos, Brolga called out so they knew we were coming. Some of the kangaroos were very curious and came right up to us when Brolga called.

I was the last person to get to hold Mindy, just as the sun was finally setting, and as we were walking back to Brolga's shed. It was a surreal moment getting to hold a baby kangaroo and watch the sunset. Overall the sanctuary was an amazing experience, and the work Brolga does is really important to protect the kangaroos.