Well this time I was on a 6 day adventure from Alice Springs all the way to Adelaide. The group were lovely but maybe not quite as lively as some of the groups I have been with. There were basically 6 girls who were the more sociable ones so we all tended to stick together.- Myself, Anne, Trine, Vera, Nicole and Jo.

Our tour guide for the full 6 days was Kiwi from...yes you've guessed it, New Zealand. He completely loves himself and is arrogant with it but he know's his stuff so I can just about let him off for that. The food on the trip was not fabulous in fact some of the concoctions were horrendous - the basic premis was if it was edible then it could be thrown into the pan!

I really enjoyed what we saw on this trip and it was even more memorable because I celebrated my birthday half way through - hurrah!

So again I will just list what we did and what we saw.

Our first stop was Kings Canyon - now I have seen heaps of gorges and rocks in the last 5 weeks but I was pleasantly suprised to find that I actually felt the wow factor again here. The rocks are that beautful red colour that contrast so well with the deep blue of the sky. The reddness on the rock is actually a protective layer of rust caused by iron oxidisation.

For the first 2 (very cold) nights we camped out in the Uluru national park campsite. The park is classified as a semi-arid desert as it rains between 250 - 300 mm per annum so imagine our suprise when we visited Uluru the next day and it ...RAINED!!!! Apparently we should regard ourselves as incredibly lucky as it is only the chosen few who will ever see Uluru as we did, with rainbows behind it and water cascading down in mini waterfalls. It was obviously very cold and very very wet but we all seemed to be able to turn the negative into a positive and just get on and enjoy ourselves.

Fortunately by the afternoon the rain had cleared up so we were able to visit The Olgas or Kata Tjuta as the aborigines call it and not get wet. These rocks are both larger and more sacred to the aborigines than Ulura so we are only allowed to visit a very small area. It was quite a tough walk up the rock but it was worth it as we arrived at a spectacular lookout.

The following day we had a long drive as we headed for Coober Pedy but fortunately it was my birthday which made it all a bit more fun. We had a cooked breakfast in a layby overlooking Mount Cooper also known as Fuluru as so many people mistake it for Uluru. The guys all sang happy birthday and presented me with a cake and champagne! This theme continued pretty much throughout the day with the occasional blast of that old classic 'Happy Birthday to you' by Stevie Wonder. We actually stopped at a lookout just outside Coober Pedy where some older couples taking in the view over a glass of wine ended up singing happy birthday to me too. In the evening we went to a pizza place, followed by some drinks at a local hotel and then some more back at our underground hostel. Everyone was in party mode and I had a really really enjoyable birthday.

Now for some facts - Coober Pedy developed around opal mining so the population here are basically gamblers. They are prepared to mine in the knowledge that they could have no finds, and therefore no income, for years just on the off chance that they will make that all important find that will make them millionaires. In summer the temperature in Coober Pedy can reach a massive 58 degrees in the shade so the people live underground where the temperature can be kept at a constant 25 degrees. We visited a museum that showed us an example of a house and took us down into an old mine and after this we were taken to an abandoned mine where we could have a go at looking for opals ourselves, I actually found some which was ridiculously exciting - ok so they're incredibly small and ugly but they're opals all the same!!!

After swearing that I was going to avoid mountains like the plague after Mount Kinabalu I was shocked to find myself having to climb one today - fortunately it was only a trifling 976m above sea level. The mountain is called Mount Ohlssen Bagge and is part of the Flinders Range which gave us some spectacular views over some of the harshest farming environments in Australia.

We have been driving through stock farms for the last couple of days and I have yet to see any stock! Many of the original farmers who settled here were driven out by the harsh conditions in fact we visited an abandoned homestead called Kanyaka once home to 60 families which now stands in ruins.The problem was that the farmers attempted to replicate the lives they had back in Britain in the outback, so they arrived with flocks of sheep, but the shortage of grass, existence of poisonous plants and the ever present dingos just wiped the flocks out. In desperation many then turned to arable farming but again the area was just not hospitable to this type of farming with only a thin layer of topsoil over rock.

On the way to Coober Pedy we actually passed through a dingo fence which is the largest manmade structure on the planet. It has had to be built as dingos are regarded as a protected species in the Northern Territory whilst in the sheep farming areas of Southern Australia they are regarded as a pest. So the general idea is that this fence will stop them straying into the South - not sure how successful it is though!

On our final day of the tour we decided to go wine tasting at 2 of the many wineries that exist in the region. Southern Australia prides itself on being a non convict state - so when it was advertising for people to come and live there it said they had to be of good character and devout church goers. For this reason SA has earned itself the title of having more churches than any other state but with so many churches there was also a need for lots of communion wine hence the establishment of the Barossa wine region! I had a great time at the wineries - one specialised in table wines whilst the other specialised in fortified wines, in fact I was in my element!!!

In the space of a couple of hours driving on that last day I saw a massive change in the landscape from arid desert and shrubland to rolling hills, trees, grass, farms and animals - it was really quite amazing. It is the first time I've seen so much green in 5 weeks - halleluliah (well I am in the church state)! The change in landscape is so sudden and dramatic that their is an official line dividing the 2 areas which is important from the perspective of farmers applying for government subsidies.

Well that's me for now!