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We woke early at 4.45 am to shower, eat and checkout. Our tour bus picked us up from the hostel and we checked in at the office before starting a long day of driving into the outback.
Our guide was called Sam from NZ and we had 19 people on our bus ranging from korean to welsh. We were the arcing last on the bus do got the very front seats where there was no leg room.
We stopped a few time for toilet/petrol but I was amazed how flat and samey 700km could be!!!! If we drove that far in the UK you'd get right from top to bottom - but passing towns and farms and different landscapes...but not here. It's all the same. Also, in my ignorance, I was expecting a red desert but there are plants everywhere! The aren't very large or dense but there are lots of them. They aren't all close together but very spread out and you can see the red soil in between.
Sam gave us all white board markets and we had to decorate our windows with our names and where we're from. He said he give a prize to the best one (which he never did in the end). As we're in the outback I thought I'd do ours aboriginal style - which obviously took a long time but was clearly the best!!! :)
We stopped at Watarrka, Kings Canyon where we did the 6km rim walk. Seeing the ted stone close up was amazing. There were lots of big ants! Some of the shapes of the rocks were really stunning!!! There were odd puddles left over from the previous nights rain. On our side we couldn't go too close to the canyon as it was hung over. But the group did shout across it to the sheer flat edge on the other side and it echoed brilliantly!
We saw fossilised sea worms and jelly fish in the rocks as this was the bottom of the sea millions of years ago. We were very high up and all around us the land was dead flat. Sam said if we were 300m higher we would e able to see the curvature of the earth!!
We walked down into the garden of Eden which was green and lush with a flowing waterfall and full pool! Sam had only seen the waterfall flow perhaps 6 times before in his 600 times here!! We were supposed to swim in the pool but we weren't allowed as tourist make it manky from their sunscreen and the last people who swim caught ecoli!!!
On the other side of the canyon we got an excellent view of the canyon and the waterfall. We could also see across to the other side where it was clear to see all the large dome shaped rocks we'd walked through!
I assumed the red centre would be hot and desert like. But it wasn't. Granted we were there in Autumn time but the temperatures at Uluru range from 47 degrees in the summer down to -7 degrees in the winter!! What a range! The hottest time of the day here is 4pm and its pretty cool in the mornings.
We had a sandwich for lunch and a lot more driving. As we neared Curtin Springs - our camp site for the night we stopped to get fire wood. We broke branches off the dead trees, but Sam only wanted wood as thick as our arms and with no twigs still attached which made it hard. He also said that this wood was very hard - what the aboriginals used to make their spears out of so it would burn hot - everyone got scratched and cut legs and arms and was hard work!!!
I could not believe the amount of flies here. And their are stupid flies. 10 land on your face, you swat them away and they instantly come back. This happens about 10 times before they find somewhere else!! :( :( :( however, I kept comparing them to NZs sandflies, and I felt better!
We stopped at this farm to buy some beers for the trip. The farm was bigger than 1 million acres and bigger than Denmark...
We sat nearest a couple called Dan and Caroline who were originally from the UK but had been living in Switzerland for the last 3 years. They were lovely.
The sun set and we set up camp but putting our rolled up swags in a circle around the fire and got the fire going. Myself and three other girls helped Sam make dinner to avoid washing up duty. However this other oriental girl kept coming over to help so one of the girls didn't really have anything to do! Naughty!
We ate chilli con carne in the dark around the fire with spicy vegetables! Drank a few beers and set up out swags. We slept head towards the fire. Put our sleeping bags inside the swags and slept like that. I couldn't find my silk liner so slept without it. Despite the hard matrice it was amazing lying under the stars looking at the almost full moon!!
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