The Red Centre

The flight over to Alice Springs from Cairns was pretty amazing - very few clouds in the sky meant that we could see right down to the ground and had a great view of the deserts and the general nothingness surrounding Alice Springs! On arrival we were picked up from the airport by our hostel (wow! star treatment! we didn't get this anywhere else!) which was just home for just the night - we were heading straight out to Uluru (Ayer's Rock) the next day.

We had time for a quick explore though - we hired bikes and rode to Anzac Hill - a memorial on a hill where there are the best views of the area - and round the town and by the river (dry as a bone, apparently famed for the boat race which happens once a year and is cancelled if there is actually water in the river as the plan is to cut holes in the bottom of the boat, stick your legs through them and run along the river bed carrying the boat... does that give you an idea of what this place is like??). That was pretty much enough for us though, Alice Springs is known for the large numbers of Aboriginal people who sit in the shade of the trees drinking all day and unfortunately it doesn't make it the most pleasant place to hang around!

Next day we were up bright and early for our pick up and our 5 hour bus ride (yes, really 5 hours!) to Uluru. Our guide, Geoff, was ridiculously enthousiastic so we could do nothing but enjoy his commentary and try to take it all in! First challenge was the camp site and trying to organise 23 people in order to get some lunch. Geoff got us into teams and Louise was elected leader of the Thorny Devils (yes, that is with a 'T' - it's an outback lizard honest ...!) and Dean was a koala (ahhhh!). Lunch was a joint effort and tents were briefly settled into before a walk around the Olgas (large rock formations similar to Uluru but smaller) and sunset at Uluru. Much as sunset was spectacular, and we were lucky with the weather, it seems to be rather a contrived event with all the tour buses congregating in one spot, each one setting up a table with drinks and snacks (cheap boxed wine and crisps and dips was good for us, though some of the other trips had champagne....!). We had our drinks and nibbles, took our photos and went back to camp.

Food was a good ol' Ozzie barbie - we'd not had too many of these since being in Australia so it went down well. Then an early night for all of us - it was an early start again next day - and when I say early, I mean early - 4am wake up call!!

This was so that we could get down to Uluru and walk round it as the sun was rising. We could have gone to the tour bus sunset spot with all the other tour buses but the whole group decided it would be a bit more serene and calming to be walking by the Rock at sunrise rather than clicking cameras next to another couple of hundred people! The climb wasn't open so there was no question of whether we would go up it or not, but in any case the Aboriginal people don't like you to do it so we weren't going to anyway. We stopped in the visitor centre to take in some more info on Uluru and the history and importance for the Aboriginal people before it was time to head off on the bus for another few hours to Kings Canyon.

We had some free time once we got to the spot we were camping at for the night, so we took the opportunity to go quad biking with 5 others from our group. It was a real laugh riding round this huge estate through all the sand and bush and even a pond (actually with some water in - all the girls got stuck in it apart from Louise!!)! We got absolutely filthy! And we were rewarded with some bush tucker cooked in the camp fire afterwards so it was all good.

Another early morning, this time in order to complete the Kings Canyon walk before the heat of the day got too much. It was actually a little cloudy so it was a really pleasant walk - great views, we took loads of photos! Mid morning and we were back in the bus heading for a picnic spot for lunch - we were plagued by flies though and Louise was already covered in bites so we were quite happy to be back in the bus and on our way back to Alice Springs. Having said that we had had a great time with a great bunch of people and we were actually quite sad to wave everyone goodbye :-(

Just enough time to crash out at the hostel for the night before leaving Alice Springs, destination Hobart, Tasmania (via Melbourne)...