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 ...

I will be speaking in more detail in the next section about my previous trip to Uluru (Ayres Rock), and the areas surrounding it. This was my second visit to Kata Tjuta National Park, the home of Uluru, and this time I had a very clear idea up front of exactly what Eloise and I wanted to get out of the experience. We had no intention of following an organised tour as it climbed the rock or of traipsing along after a guide as he explained every little detail of Ul...