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We had a mammoth road trip ahead of us as we left Adelaide, over 2200 miles right through the heart of the continent. We were doing two 'relocations' for rental companies, one from Adelaide to Alice Springs, and the next from Alice up to Darwin. A relocation is basically when a nationwide rental company has a vehicle in one city, but needs it in another for a customer to rent, and so they offer very cheap rates and sometimes other incentives to get people to move their vehicles for them.
We picked up our first reloc from Britz, and it turned out to be a beast of a machine, a huge 4 wheel drive Toyota, brand new. The staff were really patronising to us, treating us as if we were going to take the car offroad at the very first opportunity (strictly not allowed on relocs), or hell, maybe just crash it into a tree for the fun of it. We were paying $5 a day though when normally it's $150 a day, so we just had to bite our lips and put up with it.
The phrase 'gas-guzzler' doesn't even come close to describing the vehicle, you could practically see the fuel notch sliding downwards (we used about half as much fuel on the next reloc over the same distance - and that was no small vehicle itself!) Another incentive for the vehicle though was that they gave us $150 towards our fuel costs, which made us a little less depressed about the outrageous fuel prices they charge in the outback. Of course, when your nearest competitor is 250 km away (no exaggeration) then there's not that much of an incentive to keep prices low. Plus, it still only came to about 75p a litre so much cheaper than England!
The vehicle had the most bizarre sleeping system too. There was a fold-up tent afixed to the top of the roof of the car. You unzipped the cover, pulled the ladder down and there was your tent!  It was really weird sleeping on the roof, plus whenever we got it set up all the other people in the camp site would stare at it as if we'd just erected a giant blow up doll rather than a tent! We never saw another vehicle like it on our journey!
The first day we did hundreds of kilometres, stopped at a tiny roadhouse/town (with a great town sign: Welcome to so-and-so, humans - 20, sheep - 22,500, flies - 20,000,000). We watched the sun set, which in the outback is truly beautiful, before retiring to the pub for some well earned VBs. (Pics of this sunset in the Uluru folder; with the windmill in the foreground). Next morning we headed off early, and the desert setting was getting more impressive by the kilometre. The earth was turning a deep, vibrant red, and the trees and bushes fewer and further between, The wildlife was more forthcoming too; we saw loads of birds of prey circling overhead, especially huge and regal looking wedge-tailed eagles, and I managed to spot a well camoflaged dingo skulking near the road. That was really cool as it's the first time we've seen one in the wild. Vultures too - huge birds gorging themselves on carrion, refusing to leave their road kill until the last possible second before they would become it themselves. We also saw a huge red kangaroo near the road. I got out and managed to get quite close to it before it scarpered.
We stopped off early afternoon in Coober Pedy, probably the second most well-known outback town after Alice Springs. It's an opal mining town, and summer temperatures can get into the 50s C! So, utilising their knowledge of digging, the residents have built an underground town to protect themselves from the heat. Of course, many of the buildings are above ground (although Katie was worried that we might drive right past the town and never know it!!) There didn't seem to be much to the place apart from a whole load of establishments wanting to take money off you by virtue of them being underground. But as we drove around the few streets we saw lots of houses which aren't on the tourist map. It's definitely a bizarre place, with all these 'houses' which are basically with double glazing and doors. It's like a human version of Winnie the Pooh! Odd. We went to the Serbian Church (that's right, it was free! Although we did make a donation, better than paying to go in a book store or cafe!) It was interesting, a big church dug out of the earth, must have taken a long time to dig.
We pressed on, and by late afternoon we had turned off the Stuart Highway and were most of the way down the Lasseter Highway, the road that goes 250 km west to Uluru. Still find it a bit odd how far Alice Springs is from Uluru - about 350 miles - as I always used to think of it as more like 10 miles! We stopped the night at Curtin Springs, 100 km from Uluru. Of course, on the eve of our visit to one of the most photographed things in the world, both of our cameras stopped working. Not one. Both. Unbelievable. I managed to just about keep mine running as it wouldn't charge anymore so there was a tiny bit of juice left, but we just had to buy a disposable camera.
By 10 the next day we had reached Yulara, which is the resort 20 kms from Uluru. It's the only half decent accomodation for 500 km, and boy is it priced accordingly. Hotel rooms start at about $500 a night (200 quid) and can go above $3000 a night (1200 quid). Ouch! Luckily we had our trusty roof top tent to save us from such extortion. We drove the last 20km to Uluru, the huge rock looming larger and larger on the horizon all the time. We had first spotted it about 50 km away, and it truly is huge, especially in such flat country.
We stopped off first at the visitor centre, which was literally overshadowed by the rock, and saw an interesting film about the area, particularly about the rock changing hands from white to Aborigine ownership. This happened in the late 70s, but it's only recently that the name 'Uluru' has become more commonplace than 'Ayers Rock'. Interestingly, in the visitor centre they had a 'sorry book'. This basically contained hundreds of letters from all over the world from people who had taken pieces of rock from the area around Uluru, many of whom who felt that they had subsequently suffered bad luck as a result, or simply felt guilty. The earth and everything on it is sacred to Aborigines, and as such there is a $20,000 fine for taking even a tiny piece of stone from the National Park. That would be an expensive souvenir!
After this we drove right up to the rock and parked up to take a walk alongside it. From a distance it looks really solid and smooth, with visible channels formed by rivulets of water after storms the only scars. Up close though, we could see scores of caves, pock marks and cracks in the rock. The whole thing is such spectacle, it's so 'Australia', that it's hard to take your eyes off it. It seems so massive too, and yet over two thirds of it is still hidden under the soil, just waiting to be eroded into view.
We drove right around it, then came back to the Visitor Centre car park, which afforded us a magnificent view of the monolith. After a while we cooked up a barbecue right in front of the rock (all the while insulting specifically; the two incredibly rude German girls who had stolen our first bbq from right under our noses, and just rude Europeans (are there any other type?!) generally.
By six we were done and made our way to the sunset viewing point. The view was simply spectacular; the perspective spot on. We had a view across perhaps a kilometre of bushland to Uluru, which at our arrival was a light orangey red. We parked ourselves on our camping stools by the fence and cracke open a Victoria Bitter. Over the next hour the changing colours of the rock were spectacular. Pretty much as the sun sank over the horizon it reached its colour zenith; a deep, rich, blood red. The sky was cloud free, which enhanced the spectacle, but didn't lend itself to any beautiful post sunset cloudscapes, so we soon headed back to camp.
The next morning our pre-dawn alarm 'somehow' (read: Katie) got turned off, so we had a manic rush to get back to get back to the rock for sunrise. We made it though, and it was worth it. The colours weren't as good as sunset, but it still looked great. The whole time we spent around Uluru, I kept thinking how privileged I was to be in a situation like this: it's such an amazing place and somewhere that most people will never see. And I'm really glad that we drove to it rather than flying, seeing the scenery change from vineyards all the way up to red wine coloured soil. I think it made me appreciate it all the more.
With some reluctance we left Uluru behind, and drove the 500km to Alice Springs. I would have liked to have spent more time there. It's not a big place, 25,000 people, but considering its location almost right in the heart of the country, it was surprisingly modern, far more so than Broken Hill. Sadly though, we had to drop off the diesel drinking monster and pick up another relocation straight away.
Our next vehicle was a big campervan, with a double bed above the living area of sofas and a table, and a kitchen with hobs, grill, microwave and even a sink! We didn't have any time to spare so we had to press on past sunset to get to our destination, Wycliffe. This is a risky proposition indeed on Austalia's wildlife strewn roads as most animals only come out at dusk. The only problem we had though, bizarrely, was a big white cockatoo that came out of nowhere and flew straight into the side of the van!
We got to Wycliffe, which was a lovely campsite. Apparently it's the Roswell of Australia, and they make full use of the connection with 'lifesize' (not really the right word- how would they know?!) models of aliens and, somewhat confusingly, the Incredible Hulk. Hmmm...
Next morning our first stop was the Devil's Marbles - great name for an attraction, you're not gonna drive past that sign are you! It was an extraordinary, beautiful area, with huge boulders littering the landscape for maybe 3 square kms. We were still in the red centre and the rocks looked beautiful against the soil. Some boulders were as big as houses, others seemed to balance precariously on top of each other, and sill others were split clean down the middle, caused by weathering of a tiny crack at the top. There's a complex and instantly forgettable explanation as to how the marbles formed, but basically all the marbles are hard granite, and were originally surrounded by softer granite which has eroded over millions of years, leaving the outcrops of hard granite exposed. The hard granite has then been weathered into round shapes. To the Aborigines they were giant snake eggs I believe.
We pressed on through the desert and soon red was replaced by fields, and, increasingly, trees, along with thousands of red termite mounds. The journey ahd gotten pretty boring by now, the only reason to stop for hundreds of kilometres was petrol. That night we stopped at Mataranka in a caravan park filled with disused termite mounds. We could tell we were in the tropical 'top-end' now as everywhere was lush and green. We went for a walk and spotted a couple of strange wallabies which were very pale but for black paws and tails, which looked very much like leather gloves and a whip respectively. I christened them Gimp Wallabies, and felt quite pleased with myself for discovering a new species... That night we also saw a big congregation of nasty Cane Toads. They're one of Australia's worst introduced species, killing any native wildlife that eat them. They're huge too, bigger than my clenched fist (I wasn't punching them, it's just a comparison...)
Next morning it was a short drive to Katherine, although a scary one as our petrol gauge had lied to us and left us on reserves for almost the whole 100 km journey. It was a pretty big town, we couldn't believe how many Aborigines were around, but then in the Northern Territory one in four people is an Aborigine, compared to 2.5% in Queensland for example. I'm pretty sympathetic to their plight really - Austalians usually slate them for being lazy and good for nothing, but I can't help but think that they did just fine by themselves for tens of thousands of years, and if whites hadn't come along 200 years ago they'd be doing just fine now. Yes, they all sit around in parks or on benches and chat, but they are only behaving as their ancestors would have thousands of years ago - only now they have no hunting to do and no traditional roles to carry out - and that's down to the whites who slate them. Just because they don't fit in with Western society's ideas of how people should behave and contribute they are looked down upon when this has been their country for at least 60,000 years.
On the other hand though, a very high proportion of Aborigines are alcoholics, even those with very young kids. It's a very serious problem, and many towns don't allow alcohol to be served to Aborigines (at the Aboriginal leader's requests). They certainly don't conform to Western standards, which in some ways is admirable in its defiance, but it also means that most go barefoot and wear little, they don't shave or wear deodorant so they always smell bad, and when conversing they often shout rather than talk. I can understand why N.T. residents complain about them, but overall I feel sorry for them.
We stopped at Edith Falls for lunch. Here we considered the possibility of crocodiles for the first time... The falls were beautiful, falling into a big like from high on a cliff. Normally it's a swimming area, so we were surprised to see it closed off. We had to walk right up to the water's edge to read why; the reason being that excessive swelling of waterways had allowed access to saltwater crocs (ie the big ones), which were now in the lake. Christ! No one's walked backwards that fast since Michael Jackson's last moonwalk.
We drove onto the outer suburbs of Darwin and stayed the night in a caravan park in Coolalinga. By now it was very hot and humid. We walked to a nearby shop to grab a few chilled beers and there were big beetles everywhere, literally crunching under our feet - yeuch! The next morning we drove on into Darwin, but that's another story for another day...
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