Once I was on the road to recovery I had an action packed 3 days at Ayers Rock National Park. First stop...a cammel ranch...apparently Oz has cammels...who knew? Then on to the national park where I climbed a LOT of orange stone steps to see some pretty nice bolders...and even more impressive were the views. The water tasted like a swimming pool though, which made it hard to drink as much as you needed to and it wasn't long before one of the Brits was in the clinic being treated for dehygdration...thankfully it wasn't me, espescially since that little excursions racked them up a bill of AUD$1700.

My stay in the national park included one sunset of the rock itself which glowed bright orange as the sun reflected off it, an even more impressive sunrise of the rock admired through somewhat sleepy eyes and surrounded by the usual hoard of Japanese paparazi/tourists, and finally an absolutely phenomenal sunrise the next day that we just had to pull over for as we drove to kings canyon.

I also saw a real live thorny devil...one of the most impressive creatures I have seen in Australia.

The 3 day tour was made up of plenty of walking, including the 10km base walk of Ayers rock itself, which the 2 Brummys were challenging me to race them around before one conveniently went to hospital and the other "had to look after him"...convenient.... as you can probably tell a lot of rocks were seen but these also came hand in hand with a lot of aboriginal culture which was really interesting and a lot more cultural than just beach bumming along the east coast...not that there is anything wrong with that....and on that note I flew to Cairns to bum down the east coast...