In the morning we went to a free pancake breakfast that the caravan park put on. Yum! The record for a female pancake eater was 9 but I could only eat 3. We went to the telegraph station afterwards. Before the telegraph station opened in 1872 it could take up to several months to get world news to Australia and from Australia to the rest of the world because it had to come by ship. There were 3000 kilometers of telegraph wire on 36000 poles from Adelaide to Darwin! From Darwin there was an under sea cable that linked Australia to Singapore. Messages were sent through morse code which is made up of short and long taps. There are about 7 of the original sandstone buildings left at the telegraph station. We then went to The Royal Flying Doctors Services. (RFDS) The Alice Springs RFDS provides medical services to remote areas of Australia. They currently cover 7,150,000sq km, which is an area larger than western Europe. Before it opened in 1928 many of people died that, if they had of got a doctor soon enough, would have lived. We went inside a model plane. It must be very hard to work as a nurse in the plane, you can’t stand up. Something like 90% of the patients they help are Aboriginal.
Tara