And another short blog about my experiences in Down Under!

I will discuss my Spring Break in this one, which was about 5 weeks ago, so I'm perfectly on schedule.

Me and Bas (who's also from UCU on exchange here) went to the Red Centre of Australia :D It was a pretty epic roadtrip. Neither of us can drive, so we went with Topdeck tours from Adelaide all the way up to Alice Springs, which is roughly 1600 kms, in seven days. Lots of Driving! We took advantage of being able to gossip about the other group members without them understanding our language in abundance. Good stuff ^^

Pictures of this epic adventure can be admired on my facebook ;)

We started off from Adelaide, which is not thát interesting a city we discovered, and travelled up through the wine valley regions.Beautiful green hills - it reminds vaguely of the English Countryside.

Winetasting? Yes please! (Apparently South Australia is famous for its wines )Driving on even further we eventually came to the town of Quorn, which had a frighteningly small population. Us tourists were quite the novelty. Our tour guide, bytheway, was Awesome. Her (nick)name was Woody and she wore tutus every day. Yes. Tutus. And they got bigger and bigger as time went by. She ended with a magnificent purple one.

From Quorn we went up to the Flinders Ranges, which is a beautiful mountain formation where we hiked about and enjoyed amazing views. We thought Quorn was the ultimate outback town with its 8 roads and isolated location - we had seen nothing yet. We came across two other even more bizarre places the day after - Woomera and Coober Pedy.

Woomera has only been open to the public since the 1980s, as it is at the edge of the Woomera Prohibited Area where nuclear bombs and whatnot are tested. This area used to be as big as Switzerland (!) and is now half that size. It is the largest military testing facility in the world. And we drove straight through it :D yay! There were signs that told you to STAY ON THE ROAD and not pick up any "suspicious items". Fascinating. Apparently, they may or may not have accidentally bombed some aboriginals tribes back in the day, but that is quite a controversial topic.

Coober Pedy was one of our night accommodations - we slept in a cave. Apparently, temperatures can come up to 50 degrees in summer, so living underground is a lot cooler than above. This town is only there to serve the opal mining that happens around and in it. 80 % of the world's opal comes from this place. It certainly doesn't look wealthy however. It was a more like a dusty, rusty, yellow, scrap-metal collection, with holes in the ground everywhere you looked. Strange place, absolutely fascinating. I don't really like Opals by the way, they're kinda old-fashioned jewelry. The kangaroo orphanage they had there was to die for however <3 SO cute!

After this, we went on to the Red Centre and Bas and I spent our first (and only) night in swags! Basically you're sleeping outside in a big sleeping bag. I slept quite good actually and it was totally worth it when I woke up around 4 am and the moon had gone down - I have seen the milky way and will never forget it.

Uluru and its surrounding national parks is beautiful for sure, but a lot more touristy than the other part of our journey as well. It makes sense though, as Uluru is the biggest effing rock I've ever seen and its magnificent. It looks surreal in its flat surroundings and its dimensions were made even more poignant to us when we walked the 10 km basewalk around it. Thank god it was cloudy and 8 in the morning, as it was forecasted to be around 37 degrees that day.

I have stolen some sand from the lookout near Uluru (it was quite funny ), hopefully the airport will let me keep it when I come back to Holland!

All in all, we did loooooots of hiking and driving, and it was epic. I have even more respect for how MASSIVE Australia actually is and how harsh conditions are away from the coast.

It is strange as there basically is one road that goes up through the centre and little towns are built there to service the road and its travelers. It is quite the contrast from Europe, where you have to get off the highway to see the little towns. In Australia, there is just nothing there… You can drive for hours and hours and all you see is bush. Humbling really.

Back in Sydney is back to studying! Some highlights of my extracurricular activities:

• Cirque du Soleil - OMG IT WAS AMAZING.
• Opera House - I went to see some talk on "the Joys of Sin". Not mindblowing, but hey, I did see something at the Opera House
• Bondi Beach! - Beaches in Holland don't even compare.. Apparently Hugh Jackman had been spotted the week before. I kept an eye out, but no such luck.
• Drag show at gay club Midnight Shift? Hell yes. Oh right: EVERYONE should see the movie Prescilla - Queen of the desert!
• I bought Shoes! :D They're peach pumps with bows on them <3

That's about as exciting as it gets for now, Liefs!