As we all boarded the coach after breakfast this morning, the radio was predicting a tropical storm for the "top end", which is what the Australians imaginatively call the part of the Northern Territory we're heading into now. Our main stop of the day was scheduled to be a dip in the famous thermal springs at Mataranka, and this was to involve a walk through the forest, so the idea that we were heading into the middle of a storm didn't strike me as particularly a...

One hundred kilometres to the South of Tennant Creek, my brief stop for the night, is what must be one of the most photographed attractions Australia has to offer - The Devil's Marbles. Aboriginal legend has it that these massive round boulders standingmysteriously on their ends and scattered around a small area of the desert are the eggs of the Rainbow Serpent, a spiritual being who helped to create the world in the Dreamtime by forcing up the land from below to...

Well, you know you're doing alright when the hotel has a sunken bar right in the middle of the swimming pool, don't you? You don't even have to get out to get a drink - just swim up to any of the underwater marble bar stools attached to the side, plonk yourself down without getting out of the water and order a drink. What unashamed luxury. Alice Springs tends to be a base for backpackers passing through the centre of Australia, as it is easy to pick up a tour fr...

This tour really is getting more exhausting by the day. At the same time as the temperature slowly rising as we make our way through the red centre, the humidity is also getting much harder to bear. After getting a good nights sleep, I was really glad that I hadn't had to get up at the crack of dawn to climb Uluru - instead, I took a leisurely breakfast with the other members of the group who had elected not to get up early, which was most of them to be honest. A...

In 1995, on my first trip to Australia, I set out on a coach from Sydney going in the opposite direction - up through the red centre and then flying across from Darwin to Cairns before heading down the east coast. Because I had written far more during that trip than I did for this area of the country during my return trips, the following pages are taken from my original travel journals written all those years ago. As I take up the journey, our organised tour had ...