Port augusta was where we resocked our little van with food, water, spare petrol, fun.... not much else here. Went to the outback centre to get some info on the outback... we realised how far we have to go to get to Ayres Rock - a long way!! In between some towns, there is about a 250km gap... and to call them a town is an overstatement. They are pretty much a petrol pump and not much else. We drove for 12 hours the first day, going through a place called Coober Pedy (see blog pic) which is a mining town. they mine for Opals here... millions of holes in every direction, and not much sign of many Opals - I think they might have been digging in the wrong place! Camped at a place called Cadney Homestead. Middle of nowhere with nothing in every direction! But it did have a bar...

Drove for many hours the next day with nothing in every direction again - pretty boring but there really was nothing there. Until.... we got about 100km's from Ularu, and the van gave up. Our poor van, s***z, finally stopped! The starter motor had gone, and refused to get our van on the go. After a bit of tinkering, she started up, but broke again when we got to Ayres Rock. We had to wait till the next morning for it to be sorted... anyway to cut a very long stroy short, the mechanic made a bodge job and it broke again...

We climbed Ayres Rock. your not meant to but everyone does, and we thought it would be a waste to go all that way and not climb it. Great views from the top.

To fixed our broken van, we had to go to Alice Springs - 400km's out of our way grrrr!!! Stayed there over night - not a very safe place, with lots of dodgy Aboriginals everywhere. As soon as the van was fixed, we got back on the road and headed back towards the south coast. Two days driving like mad through the outback, and we made it back to Adelaide, very tired and wiery, but we had survived the outback!!!