I arrived in Alice Springs from Sydney and the airport is like someones back yard - its tiny and just some scrub land in the middle of nowherre!!  There is one conveyer belt to collect your luggage from in the whole airport, and friends and family can greet you literally as you get off the plane and walk into the airport.  Theres a half hour time difference - Alice is 30mins behind the east coast, which my brother later said isnt a time difference, its just late.  And that kind of says it all.  Alice Springs is the land that time forgot, its like an old mid-west american town, there is nothing there!  This was probably enhanced by the fact that Id just come from Sydney where there is always about 10 things to do, but I was very glad that I only had to wait til the next morning there!

We were picked up at 5.15am from our accommodation in Alice Springs (ugh!) and then did a six hour drive to Kings Canyon.  Among the stops was Eldunda, the centre of Australia - I thought there would have been a sign or something, but theres literally a petrol station there and then the desert continues.  Not the most exciting of places!

The journey wasnt that interesting as you are on a straight road with no deviation and there is nothing to look at - there is just red dirt and a few low scrubby type trees for miles and miles and miles.  Its not officially a desert as they get too much average rain by about 100ml or something, but its essentially a desert really, theres just nothing there.

We arrived at Kings Canyon and did the 6k walk from the north wall round to the south wall, which means you essentially walk around the big crack!  We saw areas of the canyon like the amphithetre and garden of eden, and the scenery was fascinating.  There are just sheer drops into nothingness, and the rock has lots of patterns on it in lots of places where it has split or algae or water has affected it.

After the walk (which was at midday in 36 degree heat argh!) we drove to Uluru (Ayres Rock).  I thought the two were kind of next door to each other as it were, but it appears not, and as with everything in Australia, they are many, many miles apart.  A 4 hour drive in fact!  On the way we drove through a fantastic thunderstorm (told you it wasnt the desert) with bright white forked lightening that reached the ground everywhere.  When we got to the other side of the storm there was the most vivid rainbow, the colours were so clear ive never seen anything like it, and it was a whole rainbow - it went all the way over the landscape - and at some places you could see another rainbow above it too, it was incredible.

We got to our permanent campsite near ayres rock just after sunset, which was spectacular and created a brilliant red sky.  We had tea and were about to go to bed when we found a huntsman spider in our tent argh!!  So we switched tents!  We all went to bed at about 9.30pm (very rock and roll) as were so tired from the day and knew we had to get up at 4am (!) the next morning to see the sun rise at ayres rock.

The early start wasnt as bad as I thought, probably cos everyone else was up and I didnt have a watch to keep telling me that it was stupid o'clock in the morning - i just kept thinking it was 7am or something instead!

We drove about 20mins to ayres rock and did the base walk which is about 8k - the rock is huge!  I know it is and thats why its famous, but the actual enormity of it is quite breathtaking when you're actually next to it.  The sun rose but was behind one of the two clouds in the entire sky (typical!) so we couldnt see the actual sun, but the effects of it were amazing - the rock went from a dark shady colour to a brilliant burnt red-orange as the sun lit it up, it was really beautiful, if a rock can be beautiful!

The walk took about an hour and a half to get around, and along the way we also saw lots of aboriginal drawings and caves along the way.  Was amazing that they were so, so old!

After the walk we drove to the Olgas which is another rock formation about half an hour from ayres rock.  We walked up to where two of the rocks meet and I felt very tiny inbetween them!  They rose up so high above us and then curved round into boulder shapes.  Very spectacular.

After lunch it was time to drive back - a good 6 hours or so - to the land that time forgot aka Alice Springs.  Some of the journey was on the Stuart Highway which goes from Darwin at the top of Australia right down to Adelaide at the bottom and takes about 3 days to drive none stop, plus most of it is just long, straight road.  No turnoffs, no corners, no nothing. Mad! hehe