Up at 5:30am, gathered my things and said goodbye, people got up at stupid o'clock just to say goodbye to me!!! aaaaw!!

Me and Chad (lad from my hostel room also on the tour) got picked up by the toyota landcruiser that will be our base for the next 10 days, and headed off to pick up the rest of the group. The group consists of Ben the guide and driver, Joe, the trainee guide, then Fran and Louise, two gals from Yorkshire, David (pom), Nienke (dutch), Florien (german), John (american) and Nuria (spanish). Multicultural! everyone hit it off straight away, and the guides were really cool too, so basically i hit the jackpot as far as company is concerned!

After stopping at th office to settle money and buy a hat and flynet we headed off up up and away! our first stop was Port Wakefield for some brekkie and a talk through the route and the truip in general, do's and don'ts etc. We then drove on to Port Augusta for a picnic lunch under a shady tree, and a paddle in the sea!! the water was gorgeous but the sand was all yukky and slushy due to the mangrove trees! Stopped at a little town called Quorn where i managed to do some posting and get a nice calippo, then off into the Flinders Ranges.

The ranges are gorgeous, you really have to see it to believe it! we stopped at a spot where we did a little walk and saw some aborigine cave art which was really cool. they use different colours for informative art (i.e maps and directions or ceremony plans) and for spiritual art, and there are over 600 aboriginal languages, but in one of them the word "yellow" is " w***a w***a" tehe!! The art was about 30,000 years old, and we learnt a lot about what different patterns mean. For instance, concentric circles mean a waterhole, and the more circles there are the more reliable the water source is!

We got to our camping spot in a woods just before sunset, and all helped to cook a pasta dinner on a gas stove (no campfires in that place due to bushfires) and slept in swags for the first time! I opened the floodgates for Frankies stupid comments, after going for a wee behind a tree in the dark and sitting on a sharp stick, i cursed and said "now i bet iv got a hole in my arse". i said it a bit too loud and Ben heard, and repied "have you only just noticed that?" it became a running joke for the week that i have multiple bumholes. Yay.

Sleeping in swags is brilliant though! i was a bit wary to start with, as was everyone i think, and we all slept with the swags zipped right to the top to keep out the wildlife! i fell asleep snug as a bug in a rug staring at the milky way.