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My Australia Fun
Right! I'm in Cairns now, and I'm going to try to remember what I've done for the last 10 days. It's all been a bit of a blur really - I still can't believe I got off my arse and did some tours. Anyway, we must go back in time to the 10th of July. I watched the World Cup final in the usual place - bit annoyed that France lost seeing as everyone was supporting them. After breakfast, it was time to leave Darwin. Naturally, the Darwin Posse was out in force to say goodbye, and Mr. Motivator even put in an unexpected appearance. Truly those people are the best ever to grace the sunny streets of Darwin. I was utterly knackered already, seeing as I'd been drinking and hadn't gone to bed, so not the best start in the world. Luckily, on the tour there were 3 boys and 15 girls, which is the kind of ratio I like. That cheered me up a bit. I caught some sleep on the car before our first destination - Litchfield. I'd already been twice, so I wasn't terribly bothered about going again. It's a very nice place though, and it was the last really warm day we'd have for a while, so I was happy enough to be there. I don't think anything else of note happened during the day - I think I was quite possibly too tired to pay any attention to what was going on. I knew one of the guys on the bus, so we shared a tent for the night at some campsite next to Hayes Creek Pub - full of Aussie 'character'. There were thousands of beer mats and money notes stapled all over the place for some reason. It came as a bit of a shock to find that I was freezing in the tent - I hadn't been even remotely cold for over two months. And the bloody tent was too small. Enough complaining. Actually, one more complaint - we had to be up at 5.30 am, which was to become a bit of a horrible trend in the coming days! Next day we went to Katherine Gorge, which is supposedly Australia's most famous gorge (that's what my tour brochure says, anyway). It was very nice, but we didn't get the opportunity to canoe down it unfortunately. We did go for a walk to get some nice views of the river, and then I went for a swim to cool off a bit. After spending the morning there, our next stop was Mataranka thermal springs, where the water was very very warm. There were dozens of tourists there sadly - dented the appeal a bit. The water was very nice though. We then camped next to Daly Waters Pub, which is a bit of a mental place. It's in the middle of nowhere, and is another example of an Aussie pub with that good old quality - 'character'. The entertainment there consisted of a man wearing a hat shaped like a house (quite a big house as well), in which he held his beer, with two chickens on top of each other on the hat. Wearing all this, he sang a song about poo. I didn't have a camera on me, but hopefully someone will e-mail the photo of this absurd event. We were speaking to someone who had worked there for three months, and he said if he wrote a book about the place, people wouldn't believe any of it. I suppose you have to make your own entertainment when you're in the middle of nowhere.... Once again that night, I got little to no sleep (it's becoming a bit of a theme). At the start of the third day, we made the short trip to Australia's first international airport, which looked like it was a bit of a dump at the time, and virtually nothing has been done to spruce it up, which seems a bit strange. Apparently, the pub won the contract to have the airstrip there. I can only imagine the disappointment of the first travellers when they disembarked to discover they were miles away from anything! Had lunch in Tennant Creek, which is a bit of a hick town. Most of the people there are Aborigines who seem to spend most of their time intimidating tourists. Like I say, you have to make your own entertainment. Sunset was spent at the Devil's Marbles. These are basically massive spherical rocks formed no doubt by some kind of weird erosion. Everyone who goes there is literally forced to have a photo taken pushing two of them - it's like a tourist rite of passage. The place is pretty stunning and very weird - the rocks look like they've been dumped there by someone. That night, it was ridiculously windy and therefore hard to sleep. Again. And as soon as we got up it started raining - in the middle of the desert! Ridiculous! On our way into Alice it started absolutely hammering it down. That part of the world hardly ever gets so much rain at this time of the year. We were told it was a real treat to see the rain coming down in the desert so hard, and I guess it was a bit strange. The whole landscape changes colour right before your eyes. We then managed to break down right in the middle of nowhere, about 2km away from where Peter Falconio was murdered! That was all a bit scary, but luckily some big weird outback guy at the petrol station patched us up. Thank goodness for that. Got into Alice that afternoon, still chucking it down. Have to say that Alice is a bit of an odd place. The town itself is quite nice, despite the fact that there's nothing to do. Having said that, I missed the annual fair by only a week, where one of the attractions was a load of ducks dressed up in tuxedos. I'm gutted I missed that, it sounds brilliant. I get the impression that the people let Alice down a bit - they're all weird. Most of them walk with a kind of depressed shuffle and no-one seems quite right. Some of the shops have signs saying 'Don't eat the soap', which sums up the state of Alice nicely. It has the highest murder rate in Australia - 12 people out of the total population of about 28,000 are murdered each year. Other than all that, it's a lovely place. That night, most of the tour group went to a very nice pub called Bojangles for a farewell meal. You get free peanuts there and you're actively encouraged to chuck the shells on the floor, so it was a right mess come the end of the evening. For some reason, there were also 3 snakes in the pub (not running loose, thankfully). The next day, I had a spare day in Alice, which I filled by going to Woolworths twice, doing my laundry and going on the internet. It was freezing (almost literally) during the evenings there and being in bed was almost a form of torture, it was that cold. Totally unexpected! Having seen more than enough of Alice, it was time to get up at 5am (unbelievable) for my trip to Ayers Rock (hereafter called Uluru - no-one seems to call it Ayers Rock over here except hyper-Europeans, and now I've got into the habit of calling in Uluru). Time for a new journal entry....
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