The Red Centre (and a long journey)

Well I've had a busy old week, I flew out of Cairns on Sunday, to Alice Springs and left at 6.30am for Uluru, which is about 6 hours away from Alice.

We walked around Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) and then had champagne (well, cheap sparkling wine anyway!) and nibbles whilst watching the Sunset by Uluru. I'm not sure how to describe Uluru, it is really kind of mysterious, and it seems to glow in the sunshine. Our guide explained the geology of it, but it's still amazing to see this huge rock sticking out of the ground, which is flat as far as the eye can see. I also saw my first wild snake! It was just slithering past while I was sipping my champagne.

We got up at stupid o clock the next day (after camping out) and watched sunrise, which is just as cool as sunset, then walked the base of Uluru. You can climb it but the local Aboriginal paople frown upon it (which gives me an excellent excuse as to why I didn't, nothing about not being bothered....) The base walk takes a couple of hours and it's cool to see the different sides of it, after all it's nothing but desert around so not much to see from the top really! (still making excuses....)

Later that day we drove to King's Canyon, and I slept in a swag that night, which is an Aussie single man tent kind of thing, and honestly is the best night's sleep I've had for ages! So comfortable! We got up super early again for our walk up and around the rim of King's Canyon, which is really impressive actually, you can see ripples in the rock from when it used to be underwater, and there's loads of local stories about why the canyon is there. We got back to Alice Springs that night and the next day I caught the train to Adelaide... I thought, hmm, wouldn't that be a great way to see the desert, blah blah blah. It turns out the desert is the same ALL THE WAY DOWN!!! so I was stuck on a train for 24 hours, and I will one day put extracts from my journal (yes I have a journal!) on here cos it's comedy, I was soooo bored and just drank endless cups of tea and coffee, and ate almost a whole packet of "malt o' milks" whilst trying, and failing miserably, to fall asleep in an aisle chair. You can all imagine the mood I was in when I arrived in Adelaide, only to get into a taxi with a driver who didn't know where he was going...... I got straight into bed when I (finally) arrived at my hostel! I leave here on another overnight trip, this time on the bus, to Melbourne (rookie error I think... will be equally as grumpy when I arrive there at 6am tomorrow!) but I don't care cos my friend Jillian is there, and it's home of Neighbours!!!