Around the Red Centre

Kings Canyon
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5 November Set off on another tour today - a 6-day tour taking us around the Red Centre & then down to Adelaide. I swear that in order to get as much money from each tour as possible the tour company squashed all the bus seats closer together & added in a couple of extra rows, as there was no space to move at all! How much were we all looking forward to that 3,500 km trip to Adelaide?

Our first port of call was Kings Canyon which had been engulfed in a mass of bush fires the previous week. Luckily for us the fires were dying out the day we arrived (there was still a lot of smoke in the sky), and so we were allowed to take our planned hike around the canyon. Afterwards we drove on to Ayers Rock Resort, where we would be camping for the next couple of nights. I still can't get over how many miles we have to travel each day, to get from place to place. Australia really is HUGE!!

Dingo - honest!
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6 November In the morning we headed off to the Olgas (aka Kata Tjuta, meaning 'many heads' - so called because it is made up of 36 large rocks). We hiked the famous 'Valley of the Winds' hike, which I'd been looking forward to completing ever since reading about it in the guidebooks at home. It feels so unreal to actually be here doing all these things I'd read about back home. I'm still having to pinch myself to check whether I'm really here or not. It's all so totally amazing!

In the evening we made our way over to Ayers Rock, to have a champagne picnic whilst watching the sunset. Ayers Rock looks so unreal - a big fat rock in the middle of absolute nothingness. From the viewing point it looks just like a cardboard cut out plonked in the middle of nowhere, like the backdrop on a stage. It seems so unnatural; I couldn't get my head round it at all! Incidentally, it was so cloudy that we couldn't actually see the sunset, but at least the champers was tasty!

Surfing the wave of Uluru
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7 November Today's wake-up call was at 4:00!, in order that we could make it back to Ayers Rock in time for the sunrise. Some of the people in my group were hoping to climb the rock, but the climb was shut as it was dangerously windy (and we wouldn't have wanted them blowing off the top of the rock now!), so we all made the 9km walk around the base. I, on the other hand, had never intended to climb the rock because the aboriginals request that you don't (plus, it looked terrifyingly steep!)

Kata Tjuta (The Olgas)
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The sunrise was about as impressive as last night's sunset (in that it was so cloudy the rock didn't change colour at all!), but it was a good cultural walk which we made the most of (knowing that we would be spending the rest of the day sat on our luxurious minibus).

In the evening we finally arrived in Coober Pedy - an opal-mining town where most of the residents live underground. It's a completely weird place (freaky scenery, freaky people), which has been appropriately used as the setting for a number of famous films e.g. Priscilla Queen of the Desert & Mad Max 3. We spent the night in an underground bunkhouse which was excellent fun, apart from the fact that I had to share my bed with a mouse, which woke me up by running over my face. Yikes!

At Kata Tjuta (The Olgas)
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8 November In the morning we went on an (underground!) opal mine tour which was really interesting, before heading off once again down the Stuart Highway - we're becoming such good friends these days! We veered off into the Flinders Ranges where we would be spending a day or so hiking etc., and looking for wild wallabies, kangaroos and emus.