This entry is a little bit back in time. We have travelled through the outback and up in to rainforests so we have had limited access to the internet and when we have it has been pretty expensive.

Anyway, our flight over from Bali a few weeks ago was horrible - we hit major turbulence and food was thrown all around the plane as a result. Because of this, we decided not to fly to Cairns from Darwin and instead travel through the outback! We arrived in Darwin at 2am and fortunately we were picked up from the airport by a friend who took us to one of the hostels. After checking in and finalising everything, we took off to our room only to find some guy already asleep in our bed! The receptionist had decided to leave straight away so we ended up having to go across the street and stay in a different hostel. Darwin was quite an odd city - it basically consisted of a load of suburbs and for the main city in the Top End, it was not very exciting. Its population was considerably smaller than Swindon's and it was too spread out to explore by foot. The decor of the public facilities like benches and bins were painted in pale greens and blues making it look like the city was stuck in the 1990's! We ended up walking around what we could on our first day and we went to the eerily empty cinema to watch a film called Semi-Pro. Our second day was spent booking car hire and transport down to Alice Springs - we decided to take the legendary Ghan train for 26 hours and then hire a car and drive the 1000km round trip to Uluru (Ayers Rock) in 2 days.

We boarded the Ghan and were fortunate enough to find that our carriage had hardly any people in it so we were able to swivel our seats around so that they faced another set to make a kind of bed. Seeing as we paid for the cheap tickets we were really pleased with our accommodation for the night. The train was really clean and modern as the rail link had only been open for 4 years so prior to 2004 people could not travel from Adelaide to Darwin by train. Our section consisted of a seating carriage, a lounge carriage, a dining carriage and a restaurant. Just looking out of the window was entertainment in itself as the landscaperapidly changed from lush woodland into scrubland that was not as dense. After about 5 hours we stopped at a smalltown called Katerine where we all got out and took a bus to the Katherine Gorge. Here we walked around for about an hour in the intense heat and eventually made our way up to the top of the gorge where we had a great view of the river and valley. After sweating profusively, we returned to the bus and we made our way back to the train. Before we knew it, darkness had descended and because it happened so early (6.30pm) we felt that by 10pm we had to go to sleep. After an Ok-ish sleep we awoke to find ourselves rushing through patchy srubland where earth was more common than vegetation. We were also excited by the propsect of seeing wild kangaroos, and after a while we gradually saw more an more of them bounding across the landscape. It is an amazing sight to see a red kangaroo in full flight as they cover so much ground in such a short space of time with little effort. We were informed that hopping uses much less energy so that is why the do that, and also that their stomachs are not in a fixed position so when the bounce up and down their stomach moves and actually pushes air in and out - another way of conserving energy. Around lunchtime we arrived in Alice Springs. The sky was a deep blue and we did not want to get outside as it looked really really hot. We were quite surprised when we did get off to find that it was not too hot as there was no humidity and the air was really dry. We later learned that it is outside of the tropics, hence the lack of humidity. We were picked up by our car company and after being briefed we set off towards Ayers Rock. We we fortunate to be given a brand new automatic estate car so we travelled through the outback in style! The 500km trip to Ayers Rock was surprisingly quick although it was rather repetitive. The landscape was really dry and if it were not for the odd mountain, dead kangaroo, wedge-tailed eagle, we could have been mistaken for driving in an empty room. The sky was a deep blue and was huge. The ground was brown and equally big. We felt as if we were driving into the middle of nowhere. That is exactly what I was excited about, to seemingly drive into the desert and eventually come across the world's most sacred rock. Unfortunately, when we did arrive we found ourselves camping in the middle of a resort that would not look out of place in any city. It had shops, bars, restaurants, a petrol station and even a police force. We could not help but feel that we were not quite in the middle of nowhere, however, we set off to catch the rock at sunset. The rock was amazing. It is hard to describe how a large monolith sticking out of the ground can be so appealing. All I can say is visit it. The colour of the rock changes all day with the intensity and angle of the sun so you could actually watch it for hours. It is so smooth and perfect it is weird. I am describing a rock!!!!!! Anyway, we returned that evening and set up camp. We only had a swag bag (mattress with a sheet cover) and we were a little bit apprehensive about sleeping on the floor in the outback because of all the snakes and insects. So, we got my mosquito net out and made our own tent. I do not know how much it helped but it certainly made us feel safer. The night sky that night was also amazing - jet black with millionsof bright stars and the occasional shooting star. The milky way was also really clear. We woke up for sunrise the following day and saw the rock in a really light orange which was a nice contrast to the dark red the previous day. After that we drove to another set of rocks called the Olgas. We trekked through the windy valley for about 2 hours getting attacked by flies at the same time. We ended the day by walking along Ayers rock's edge before going back for some dinner. We again rose early the next day and drove all the way back to Alice Springs. We checked into our hostel, had a few drinks, made some friends, and went to bed. The outback once again beckons.