Tues 7th February – This was the first day of a 7 day tour across the outback from Adelaide to Alice Springs. The name of the tour was Desert Patrol with the company Groovy Grape. When we were all picked up from our accommodation in Adelaide I already knew 3 of the boys from the Barossa Valley wine tour the previous day. When the driver had picked up the last person for our tour, one of the girls (Heather) asked if we could go around and introduce ourselves (standard procedure in most tours) and the driver said no as that would take too much time!!! That kind of set the mood for what kind of tour guide he was going to be. But it meant me and Heather organised get-to-know-you games and other bus games as the tour guide never even spoke to us when he was driving!
Our first stops in the outback were the towns of Quorn and Hawker. The scenery changed quite dramatically once we left Adelaide, and became more remote and desert-like.
We drove to the Flinders Ranges and went for a couple of walks to see some Aboriginal rock art in the Yurumbilly caves. It was nice to get out and stretch our legs, and it was a while since I’d seen anything cultural. We stayed in Angorichina, a campsite in the Parachilna gorge. We weren’t camping tonight, just staying in bunk beds in a cottage. Before a barbeque dinner we went for a walk around the gorge and along the dry river bed where me and one guy Nathan found the remains of a dead snake. Lovely! In the evening Nathan who was Canadian taught us all a card game called Golf which we played for a while – (and actually we played it almost every day for hours!) My Canadian friends Melanie and Roxane who I did part of the East Coast with taught me that game too and it reminded me of them :) During the game we discovered one of the boys looked like Justin Bieber and we called him Justin for the rest of the trip, even the tour guide didn’t know what his real name was! We also played a Justin Bieber song every day either on the bus or at camp to tease him.
Weds 8th February – We had some more driving through the outback today so a few of us went for a walk along the main road out of the gorge in the morning to stretch our legs before getting on the bus. We stopped in Marree which is rich in its history of camel trains. We drove along the Oodnadatta Track following the old Ghan Railway and its long abandoned railway settlements. The Ghan is the most famous train in Australia and is named after the Afghani camel traders that used to travel along this route from Darwin to Adelaide. We went to the southern end of Lake Eyre which was completely dry and just a bed of salt now. We stopped in Coward Springs for a relaxing dip in the hot springs. It was really small, just about 7 of us could sit in a tiny hole in the ground, and afterwards we had sand EVERYWHERE! We then looked at another hot springs, but we couldn’t sit in it this time. Mound Springs was pretty cool as it was continually bubbling in the middle and I took a video as photos don’t really show how cool it was. We got to our camp for the night in William Creek. This is the smallest town in South Australia with only 6 inhabitants!!!!! There was a tiny pub which was part of the campsite and after dinner we went for a drink there. Lots of tourists who pass through pin their ID’s or photos on the wall, and 3 of the boys from my tour did the same as one of them recognised a girl that went to his school and had no idea she had come to Australia! Pretty good idea. After the pub we slept in swags (my first time since the west coast tour) and as we all didn’t know each other that well still, the boys all went to one end of the site while the girls stayed on the other end – which also had lots of ants…
Thurs 9th February – This morning we drove through Anna Creek, the world’s largest cattle station. By lunchtime we reached Coober Pedy, the opal capital of the world. We had a hot lunch of lasagne and chips which was a nice change from sandwiches! We took a tour of the opal museum which was interesting, we saw a really outdated film on the history of opal mining. Afterwards we were shown some replica underground houses. As it gets so hot in Coober Pedy, with temperatures reaching 50 degrees, people started building houses within the rocks and caves to keep cool. The name Coober Pedy is an Aboriginal name which means “white people’s burrows”! Australian opal is quite unique and at the museum they told us what to look for when buying opals. So when we were told we had a couple of hours free to explore the town, me and Heather went to shop for opal rings! After trying out a number of different stores, we found a reputable dealer and bought a ring each, a nice souvenir of Australia for me! The town itself was quite small and a lot of the shops were closed as it wasn’t high season. We did take a look inside an underground church though which was beautiful. We met back at our accommodation (which was an underground hostel!) and our guide drove us out to the Breakaways. These are rock formations in the desert and were stunning to walk around. We got back and our guide bought us pizza before we said goodbye to 3 members of our group who were heading back to Adelaide. After they left, the rest of us went to an art gallery which also moonlighted as a kangaroo sanctuary. We got to meet a few baby kangaroos that had been rescued from the road and a tour guide from another group spent 20 minutes play-fighting with one of the 4 month-old joeys!
Fri 10th February – We spent a lot of time driving today, with a few breaks for ice cream! We stopped to take pictures outside of the border sign welcoming us back to the Northern Territory. It’s funny to think I left NT in September, so much has happened since then! When we got to Uluru we went straight to the Cultural Centre. Uluru was given back to the Aboriginal community a few years ago and in order to look after the land, Tourism Central Australia and the Anangu people worked together to create a Cultural Centre and a resort called Yulara, which is the only place people can stay and camp near the rock. When we got to Yulara it was a very nice, modern campsite with good facilities. We took a walk around the Cultural Centre which explained the history of the people that lived on this land for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived. The Cultural Centre is ideally meant to be visited first before going to Uluru, and is supposed to be done individually so that people can make up their own minds about the significance of Uluru. One of the main debates people have is whether to climb it or not. They don’t forbid it but do discourage it because it offends the original land owners. There was a “sorry” book which had letters sent by people from around the world apologising for taking pieces of rock with them. Apparently taking rocks or stones from Uluru brings bad luck and there were hundreds of letters in this book by people explaining what had happened to them and their family members once they got back to their home countries. There was a pile of stones under the book which were the stones that people had sent back. It was interesting and quite moving.
After looking around the Cultural Centre which was great, we did a short Kunya walk to a waterhole that the Anangu people used to collect water from when other water supplies were running low. By the time we got back to camp we were all tired and didn’t feel like getting back on the bus to see the sunset. But Yulara had a nice swimming pool so we went straight in there for a couple of hours and played pool games like Marco Polo and Monkey (Piggy) in the middle. We slept in swags at night which was nice as we all slept near each other this time and talked as we watched the stars in the sky. A few of us were looking up at the right time and saw the brightest shooting star – it was incredible!
Sat 11th February – We got up at 4am to watch the sunrise at Kata Tjuta (also called the Olgas). From here we could see the sun rise behind Uluru, so Uluru looked dark but the colours of the sky behind were beautiful and the colours of Kata Tjuta were so red and vibrant in the morning sunlight. We did a walk in Kata Tjuta called the Valley of the Winds. This was a 7km walk through the rocks and was quite tiring by the end because it was getting hotter. We also walked through Walpa gorge which was pretty, before heading back to camp. We had no other activities planned for the day so me and a few other girls took a nap whilst everyone else played volleyball. It was too hot outside and there was no shade at our campsite so we napped on the bus! But the guide woke us up as he wanted to take the bus somewhere so I went to join the rest of the group in the pool. After dinner we went to watch the sunset at Uluru. This was really nice and although it was a bit crowded we found a good spot to ourselves where we could take lots of pictures. There were tons of other tour groups there, some backpacker groups like ours and then some “older” groups which cost more and their tour guides had snacks and champagne ready for them at sunset!
Sun 12th February – Today we woke up at 4.30am so that we could watch the sunrise at Uluru. It was a better sunrise than the day before because this time the sun was rising behind us and we could see the red colours of Uluru clearly. After eating breakfast at the spot where we were watching the sunrise, we did the base walk around Uluru. This took almost 3 hours. It was a shame that our guide didn’t come with us, even though he was supposed to be leading a “guided cultural walk”. A few of us were annoyed at him for that. The Cultural Centre actually offer a free 1 hour guided Mala walk with an Aboriginal guide but tour groups aren’t allowed on this so I may have to come back one day for it as that would be really good. The base walk itself was good for the first half an hour, but then it got too hot, and there were a lot of signs forbidding us to take photographs in certain locations due to the sites being of cultural significance to the Aboriginal tribe the land belongs to. There were some cool formations on the rocks and it would have been nice to hear the stories behind them but there weren’t any signs up and without a guide we were just walking around not taking any pictures (because we weren’t allowed) and just played “I Spy” over and over again haha! Yes it was my idea, everyone moaned at first saying it was a kid’s game but they all played eventually. After the walk we drove a few hours to a campsite at King’s Creek (near Watarrka national park) which luckily also had a pool so we hung out in the pool and played Golf (card game). It was our last night together as a group and we had a campfire and stayed up late. It was my last night sleeping in a SWAG (probably for the last time in Australia) and it was nice to fall asleep watching the stars. Finding a spot on the floor which wasn’t covered by ants was tricky though! Luckily I didn’t get any crawl into my SWAG with me but a few of the guys got bitten by mosquitos overnight.
Mon 13th February – We had another early start today with breakfast at 4.30am and walked up the steep steps to get to the top of Kings Canyon in Watarrka National Park. We saw the sunrise here, and with the different layers of sandstone in the canyon, the sunrise gave the canyon a red glow. We walked around the rim of Kings Canyon and it was getting quite hot, even at 9am! Luckily there were lots of opportunities for group photos and Kings Canyon reminded me of the Bungle Bungle National Park in the Kimberley’s (West Coast) which was also shaped like domes made by layers of sandstone. In the middle of the canyon there was a small waterhole named the “Garden of Eden” which we all took a refreshing swim in before continuing the walk back to the car park. We got back to camp around 10.30am to pack up and have a cooked breakfast/lunch. Afterwards we were given the option to swim in the pool but it was almost 40 degrees at 11am so we decided to just drive on to Alice Springs so that we would have time to shower and get ready before a meal out in Alice.
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