East Coast of Australia - Done! I had a grand old time but I'm not really a beach person and the east coast is all about beaches and partying so I was craving something a bit more unusual. And what's more unusual than a really big rock in the middle of nowhere? Exactly. Ayres rock is both a cultural and natural heritage site, so I got to get my geek on and learn all about geology and aboriginal mythology and all that shiz. Plus the rock was indeed really really big.

So I flew into Alice Springs where I happened to run into Neele who I met in Airlie at the airport. Strange that we never got round to mentioning the fact that we were doing the exact same route! She was with a guy called Pascal who we thought was doing the rock tour with us but he ended up on a different tour with a load of old people, poor guy. Checked into Annie's Place and managed to get everyone else to come to me for dinner, which was a relief cos according to pretty much everyone, you get stabbed if you venture out on your own in Alice Springs.

I had somehow managed not to see any of the aboriginal people up the east coast, and hadn't really given them much thought. But in Alice Springs they're everywhere, and they all seem to be sitting around town looking misplaced. Somehow it hadn't really sank in before now that they're actually indiginous people who up until around 200 years ago when we came and ruined it all, lived off the earth and drew on cave walls. That's crazy. Obviously there's a massive culture gap between them and the aussies and it's hard to tell if all the stories of people being attacked in Alice Springs are entirely true, but it's hard not to feel intimidated walking down the street after hearing all that, taxis it is.

Next morning it was time to get rocking, so after a 4:30am start we hopped on our rock tour bus and set off on the million (approx) mile journey down to Uluru, the big rock. After we all had a little snooze our guide Matt gave us some getting-to-know-each other games. We were a group of 13: three Irish girls, two french girls who didn't speak english, a french couple, a Dutch couple, one German and one English guy, and me and Neele. Matt was one of the best guides I've had and pretty much made the tour. He used to be in the army so swears every other word and likes to break things, but is also a fountain of information on pretty much everything to do with Australia (despite being English) and cooks wicked food.

We started off with King's Canyon, a great big hole in the ground with sheer drops all around it all made of the red sandstone rock that everything else is made out of in the red centre - iron in the rock and all that. There was a bit of a hike up to the top but judging by how much everyone else was struggling I must have gotten slightly fitter over my travels, I can cope with hills now! The landscape here is crazy, like some TV version of Mars or something, with big chunks of red rock everywhere. Striking.

After we did a loop of the canyon we set off towards our bush camp for the night, but first we had to gather some firewood so that we wouldn't freeze to death too much. This meant ripping the branches off a load of trees with our bare hands then dragging the massive logs back to the bus. I rolled up my sleeves and tore apart an ENTIRE tree limb by limb only to get there and be told it was s*** wood and couldn't be used. Oh well, it was still so satisfying even if I was covered in scratches and a generous coating of dust afterwards! I'm a real man. We set up the campfire while it got more and more FREEZING, had an amazing dinner of chilli con carne all cooked over the fire, and got our swag on for the night. Swags are like big sleeping bags that you put your real sleeping bag into and they're supposed to keep you warm. They did not. The temperature was in the minus figures and I was curled up in a ball in the bottom of my swag shivering all night, camping under the stars isn't quite as romantic a notion as it sounds!

We got up bright and early (or rather dark and early seeing as the sun wasn't even up yet) to make our way to our next impressive collection of rocks: Kata Tjuta. I'll spare you the nerdy geology of it all but basically Ayres rock is one big smooth rock while Kata Tjuta is a conclomerate rock made up of lots of little rocks which are then split into lots of giant mounds (Kata Tjuta means many heads) poking out of the earth. It's bizzare looking stuff. There's lots of grass and trees around too making for some pretty nice contrasts between the greenery, the red of the rock and the blue of the cloudless sky (I'm so arty me). We took an awesome jumping photo which Matt managed to delete and then went on a long walk to admire the views before making our way to the main attraction, Ayres rock itself.

First we went to the culture centre where the aboriginal way of life is explained. This is called Tjukurpa, a word which stands for their laws, the story of their origin and pretty much the basis of everything they do. The rock is pretty much a bible for the indiginous people, as each mark on the rock has a corresponding story from when creational beings walked the land and shaped the earth, all with their own morals which led to the laws of their society today. There was no written language for the aboriginal people until we arrived so all the stories are passed down by word of mouth from the elders, and you're only allowed to know some of the stories once you've shown you're responsible enough to know them. So this means that as clueless uninitiated tourists we weren't allowed to be told a lot of the stories or to photograph some of the rock. Only if you're special. It's a shame cos walking around the rock while imagining it as the scene for all these mythological events makes the already pretty otherwordly environment even more surreal, would have been cool to hear more about them.

We went on a short walk to see some of the cave drawings (some were as recent as 50 years ago when the cave was still used as a classroom, crazy) and learn about bushtucker, then headed over to the sunset point to see the famous red glow of the rock as the sun goes down. It was pretty stunning, the colours change so fast! Then it was party time so we got on the bus where Matt bought out a disco ball and did a load of doughnuts with the bus to the tune of cheesy 90s disco, nothing gets people in the mood like 'barbie girl'! This night we were in a proper camp with toilets rather than just bushes, so we got to play flip cup and beer can bowling, before all bonding around the camp fire for a bit before another night of freezing in a swag, albeit with a nice beer jacket this time which was a bit better for a while.

On the last day we got up to watch sunrise over the rock over breakfast, all still shivering a bit. It wasn't quite as impressive as sunset but still really nice. Then it was time for a two hour base walk all around Ayres rock. Lots of walking on this trip (26km or so overall) but at least this one was flat! We managed to lose half the group and the bus got blocked in by some car too so we were there for way longer than we planned, watching all the Aussie and Japanese people climb the rock like little ants. There's a book in the culture centre called 'I didn't climb the rock' which you sign if you didn't climb it. Climbing the rock is really disrespectful to the aboriginals seeing as it's their sacred scripture and having a load of tourists pissing (litrerally) on top of it kinda ruins it a bit. There's also a book called the 'sorry' book where people have taken bits of rock from Uluru and been cursed with bad luck so they send their rocks back and ask for forgiveness (craaazies). So we were good and just admired the rock from a distance. My imagination was on overdrive seeing faces in all the grooves of the rock, it's not surprising the Aborininal people assigned meanings to them all, it's a pretty weird looking rock.

Alas after that we had to say goodbye to the rock and head for home. It's definitely my new favourite rock. What with this and the caving trip in Thailand I could probably make a whole album just of rocks. Who knew they could be so cool?! Take my word for it though it is one cool rock. It looks a bit like a big dough ball that a giant left on the rolling board (I'm so poetic). Anyway on the way home we stopped at a camel farm that Matt used to work at to ride some camels (they made them run which was amusing) and play with their pet dingo. We had to get off the bus eventually though and had a much needed shower before heading to the bar for the afterparty, the tamest game of 'I have never' ever and a few drinks before finally getting a proper night's sleep in a BED. So good.

I had a whole day to kill in Alice Springs until my bus at 7pm so I went to the reptile zoo to see lots of snakes and was chilling out in the rock tour office to steal their internet. Matt happened to pop in and invited me to go wiggety grubbing with him and two of the other guides, one of which had never done it before. Seeing as we hadn't had a chance to do this on the tour and seeing as I'm always keen to add things to my 'weird things I've eaten' repertoire I was all for it, so we all set off back into the bush. The grubs live in the roots of the wiggety grub tree so you have to dig to find them - yet more savagely killing trees then, woo! After a loooong time we finally found one and I got to eat it. Yum. It was a lot jucier than I thought it would be but tasted ok, sort of like korma sauce. Strong aftertaste though. Aaaand so with that my outback experience was complete, wooah long post.