152. Visiting Museums before departing Alice Springs

Saturday 2 August 2008

As Dick has a number of meetings scheduled for the next two weeks, we are leaving the Earthroamer in Ted and Nerys’ garden and flying home to Sydney today.

**Earthroamer parked in Ted and Nerys’ garden**

Our flight departs this afternoon. We spent the morning visiting the National Road Transport Hall of Fame and the Ghan Train.

Bob Lasseter’s old Landrover which he used to search for his father Harold Bell Lasseter’s gold reef between 1966 and 1978. The seat on the top was used so they could see above the scrub, this would be the same level if they were riding a camel.

We drove to the site of the original airport in Alice Springs and visited the Aviation Museum and the Kookaburra Memorial. We had found the wreck of the Westland Widgeon aircraft, named the Kookaburra in 1978. It was flown by Keith Anderson and Bobby Hitchcock when they were forced to land in the Tanami Desert in 1929 while searching for their missing friend, Charles Kingford Smith. Anderson and Hitchcock died and the aircraft disappeared until we found it on 31 August 1978 – almost 30 years ago. The Northern Territory Government recovered the aircraft and placed it in this specially built building, showing the aircraft remains, just as we had found it all those years ago.

**The Kookaburra engine and history panels inside the memorial**

**Dick looking at the Kookaburra as we found it in 1978**

Our plan is to fly back to Alice Springs on 15 August, then continue our drive to Byron Bay and down to Sydney.

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