Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
I'm in the Peter Pans travel shop in Cairns, waiting to speak to someone about booking some excursions, but it's super busy so they're letting me use the internet for free. I get the impression I'm gonna be waiting a while, as the travel agent has been speaking to the same girls since I got here about 40 minutes ago, so I thought it'd make sense to at least start a new entry.
I actually just edited my previous update because I forgot to write about being stranded in Apollo Bay and seeing the Great Ocean Road and 12 Apostles - oops!
On Saturday 2nd, I left Adelaide along with Daniel and Daniela, Nadine, Eva and Cristian (a German couple who had been on the Melbourne to Adelaide trip) and Nathalie (Swiss, ditto). Oh, and "the babies" - a 17 year old German and an 18 year old Brazilian who were just total children. When we got on the Oz bus, there were 2 girls already on it, who turned out to be... SCOTTISH! Hooray! I think for 6am I was a bit overly excited about this fact, but hopefully it didn't freak them out too much, as we agreed to meet up in December when they come to Edinburgh for a concert :) Their names were Alana and Lynne, from Aberdeen. Sooo nice to be able to talk normally without having to slow down or use "proper" words!
Our driver was called Miles and he was quite funny. We didn't do much other than driving in the morning (we did stop for breakfast at a service station where I had a "cheddarmite scroll", aka. Vegemite, cheese, pastry. What more could you ever want?!) We reached a place called Quorn, which would be our home for the next 2 nights. It was lunchtime so Miles cooked up some fajhitas (not made with quorn) then we went for a "walk"/HIKE up "Devil's Peak". It was quite hard work, very rocky and steep, and SO MANY DAMN FLIES. But, like with every "walk" I've done, the views at the top were pretty great. When we made it back down, the rest of the day was pretty much ours, so we went to one of the 3 pubs where you could buy booze to take away. Daniel and I got some wine and a few of us sat in our living room watching Scary Movie. Then at about 6pm, Miles took us out to go looking for rock wallabies. We saw two. When we came back, we had a BBQ, which was great - we had kangaroo steaks, camel sausages, and buffalo burgers. The buffalo wasn't great and the camel sausages were alright, but the kangaroo... was DELICIOUS! Can't feel bad about eating something so cute when it tastes so good. Sorry Skip.
The next day we got up and drove to Yourambulla Caves to see some Aboriginal paintings. We then stopped at Wilpena Pound for a BBQ lunch before taking a less strenuous walk. We got back to the accommodation and the sun had made an appearance so me, Alana, Lynne and Nadine sat in the sun for a while. Then it was time to help chop veggies for Miles making us a lamb curry. Not as good as kangaroo! We sat in the living room watching Muriel's Wedding (the guy who owned the place brought down a huge collection of Aussie films!) then went to bed.
Miles had us up at 4am the next day, to leave it 5am! Everybody was shattered, so it was a pretty quiet drive, but pretty nice to watch the colours in the sky as the sun came up. Around lunch time we arrived into COOBER PEDY! It's this really strange opal mining town right in the middle of nowhere, where the people live underground and pretty much do nothing other than look for opals. There were quite a few Aborigines here and Miles said that girls shouldn't really walk about alone, eek. We put our stuff into the bunkhouse, which we were all sharing, then it was time for the opal mine tour. We saw an underground house which was quite interesting - it just looked like any normal house but without windows, which would drive me nuts, and when you put the lights off it was completely pitch black. You would never know what time it was if you woke up there! They had a really nice shop selling their opals, and seeing as Australia produces... was it 85%?... of the world's opals, I thought I'd better buy one as a souvenir. So I bought a necklace that's silver and opal with a dragonfly pendant. It has since become an early birthday present from mum and dad, thanks! After the tour, we went "noodling" for opals (which means "looking unsuccessfully in the dirt", I think). After that, we went to a kangaroo orphanage which is run by an old couple who take in injured joeys and nurse them better so they can go back into the wild. It was really sweet to see these poor wee kangaroos interacting with the humans as if it were so natural. I thought it was cute watching them being fed, but then they brought out a tiny baby joey which was possibly THE cutest thing I have ever seen! He was really awkward on his feet and he just kept trying to hop back into the blanky that they'd brought him out in, waaaaah too cute! We got the chance to hold him and his friend, who was equally cute. Definitely a highlight so far :)
That evening we went to a (the) pizza place for dinner and then to an underground bar (of course). And this is where the night in Coober Pedy became interesting!!! We were all playing pool, and these two Aussie guys came to join us. Their names were Glen and Scott (or Scottie, obviously) and they told us they owned a pub just up the road. Most people had gone to bed but me, Daniel, Daniela and the babies went with them to their pub where we played pool, used the jukebox, and drank, for free, all night! We were getting up at 5am, so going to bed at 3am probably wasn't the best of ideas, but it was worth it for the sheer randomness and fun of a night in Coober Pedy - who knew?!
The next day we began our drive to Uluru. Of course, those of us who had been living it up Coober Pedy style slept most of the time on the bus, but I woke up just as we were coming into the Uluru and Kata Tjuta National Park. Waking up to see Uluru was pretty cool! If I had known at this point what the weather had in store for us, I would have stared at Uluru for longer while the sun was actually shining on it... Anyway, we had a look in the Cultural Centre which had lots of information about Aboriginal history. One thing I found really interesting in there was a "sorry book" - a book FULL of letters from past tourists who had taken a piece of the rock home with them and were writing to apologise and to return the rock to its rightful home. Almost every letter said that, ever since taking the rock, they had experienced nothing but bad luck, and they were all terribly sorry for taking it away from its home. I was tempted to nick a bit just to see if I'd have sh!t luck, but then I thought, that's a lose-lose... bad luck, and postage costs to send rocks back to Australia. Interesting though, Aboriginal culture is very spiritual... creepy! At this point, the rain set in... and it POURED. Soon we started to see huge lightening bolts. The intention was to drive to the sunset lookout and have some bubbly whilst watching the sun set over Uluru. Well, we had bubbly mixed with rain water and soggy crisps, minus a sunset. Miles was mega excited about the fact that there might be waterfalls running off the rock, so we drove closer to it... and yes, there were definitely waterfalls! It was insane, all of us went in the pouring rain right up to the rock, wading in bright red puddles. It was actually quite scary on the wade back, because the water level was rising so much - thank god I had flip flops on, although I was a bit scared about what might be lurking in the water. Safe to say, the shorts I was wearing are now in the bin - not because I shat myself, but because they were permanently stained with red from the rock! The bus journey back to camp was really fun - nobody was allowed to sit down because we were all soaking and the seats would get wrecked, so we were all lined up in the aisle, all drenched, and all singing along to the tunes Miles put on :) I'm really gutted that I didn't see Uluru looking as it does on all the postcards, but I guess it was a pretty cool experience anyway. Different.
We camped nearby at Yulara, but we didn't get to sleep in swags :( so disappointed. Also didn't get to see any amazing skies filled with stars :( Oh well! The next morning we were up at 4.20am to leave at 5.20am to see sunrise at 6.20am... which didn't happen! Again, it was too cloudy and miserable, so we (and several others) were just a bunch of tools standing next to a big rock watching the sky go from dark to slightly less dark. Boohoo. We had a walk around with Miles and he told us some stuff about the rock and how the Aborigines used it. Then he left us and we did the base walk... which was 10km! Everybody was moaning because it took SO LONG, and with all due respect, the landscape never changes the whole walk! To the right, a big red rock. To the left, some bushes and red sand. Straight ahead... nothing but a very wet and muddy path (NOT fun to walk through for 2.5 hours!) I think Miles was a bit put out when we all returned looking miserable, but it was just too long. I don't know why none of us requested to do half the walk, because the whole 10km, we all did nothing but talk about how we wished we were doing the half walk.
So after eating loads of fruit cake and biscuits that Miles supplied, we got back on the bus and headed for Kata Tjuta ("The Olgas") - a pretty cool rock formation. We did ANOTHER WALK! But it was really short so everybody was relieved. We went back to the camp at Yulara and made our lunch, then it was back on the Oz bus to head to Kings Canyon. Miles was almost positive that we weren't going to be able to go, because the weather had been so bad, but it turned out the roads were ok to drive. Sorry, I mean road, singular - the outback really is just vast nothingness. Although, it's not as red as I had expected - apparently this year has been the wettest for a long time, so there's actually bright green everywhere! Weird. I woke up to the sound of Miles beeping the horn and when I looked up I realised he was beeping at a camel that was sitting in the road! Looked left and there was a big group of them. Crazy.
We made it to Kings Canyon where we were camping again. There were signs warning you about feral dogs and dingoes, eek! And I saw a giant disgusting spider scuttling along the kitchen floor. It was scary but I still ran after it to take its photo, haha. It started to rain (surprise) but the guys still managed to get a campfire on the go, so after dinner we sat around that, drinking goon and listening to music :) Miles suggested that if we had wet clothes we should hang them near the fire, which I thought was genius as my walking shoes were drenched. About an hour later we realised that my shoes were burning! Hahaha. Luckily this was at the end of the outback trip! They are still wearable, just a bit melted at the front, haha. I was gonna turf them but thought I might need them for my Cape Tribulation trip - but I literally JUST booked that trip (in Peter Pans - had a small break from the blog writing) and she said "thongs" (flip flops) will be fine.
On Thursday we got up and the first thing Miles said to me was that somebody had left the kitchen door open and a dingo had come in and stolen our tatties... What? It's not like me and Daniel were the last people in the kitchen... Oops! At least Mr Dingo only took the spuds, or I think we woulda been in big trouble! We headed to Kings Canyon where we hiked around for about 3 hours. At first I was dreading the thought of that, but it only took 3 hours because there are so many great lookout points. You start the hike by going up Heart Attack Hill - VERY aptly named. A good way to sweat out the goon, I guess. But the views from the top of the canyon were pretty impressive. After a few more hours' driving, we arrived into "The Alice"! Alice Springs. Me, Daniel and Daniela checked into the YHA and then it was time to meet everyone at "Annie's" for a $5 dinner and some pitchers of cider.
Alice Springs is quite a special place. Lots of Aborigines, who are a little bit scary... they all sit under trees being stinky and drinking. It's a bit odd. But also fun to be in such a weird place :) We all slept quite late and then had a wander around the town. It's pretty small... we actually bumped into Eva and Cristian and then Nadine within 2 minutes! Daniel and I went for a beer in the sun, which was really nice. Later on, everybody met at Bojangles, a bar that Marshy's mum had told me about before I left Edinburgh - it's pretty cool! It's like an old style cowboy saloon with cowboy boots hanging off the ceiling etc, and the toilets are weird... the handle on the door into them is backwards, so you look like a dork pushing the wrong side of it. Then in the toilets it's all UV lighting and when you turn one tap, a different one comes on. Weird. I had kangaroo steak again for dinner - it's just so good! After dinner we went to the Rock bar but it was pretty crap so we just went to bed.
On Saturday I went to the shops with Daniela (there are not many) and then spent a couple of hours sunbathing by the YHA pool with Daniel. At about 6pm, the 3 of us walked up Anzac Hill, where we bumped into Eva and Cristian! We all watched the sunset which was pretty nice. It was the beginning of the "Master" games in Alice (some festival or other?) so quite a good atmosphere about the place. We went for dinner to a Chinese restaurant and then Daniel, Daniela and I went for one last drink together - boohoo :( They were leaving the following morning to do the Alice to Darwin trip, so I had one day alone in Alice (my flight to Cairns was at 5.25pm last night). It was really sad to say goodbye to them having been with them since Melbourne. They are really nice people and we had a very "special" time in Coober Pedy which will not be forgotten! :) Miss you Swiss!
So yesterday I went to the Reptile Centre and the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Both were pretty cool. Then I got the shuttle bus to the airport and flew to Cairns, where I am now. The flight seemed very short!! Only 2 hours. At one point there was hefty turbulence which fair made me crap myself, but it didn't last long. Got into my hostel around 9pm, and it's really nice. It's the same company as the one I was in in Melbourne. This time we have a fridge, sink, and ensuite bathroom in the room! Such luxury! Janina has arrived but I haven't seen her yet because I've been in Peter Pans all morning. I just booked a day trip to Cape Tribulation tomorrow which sounds brilliant, and on Thursday I've booked to do a day trip snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef :D I have also booked my Whitsundays sailing trip which I'll do on 30th October for 2 nights, and my Fraser Island trip which is open dated. All in all, the girl in Peter Pans made me a package for $599 - less that 400 quid for 4 trips, which I think is amazing! Woohoo :)
Well this is probably the longest blog of my life! But I had a lot to say. So I'm gonna head off now and maybe go exploring. Cairns is really warm and humid. Hoping for good weather when I go snorkelling :)
Ciao for now xxx
- comments