Woke up about 5.15am for day 1 of our rock tour. The tour involved visiting great places like Kata Tjuta, Kings Canyon and of course, the rock itself, Uluru also known as Ayers Rock. Was definitely looking forward to this one!!
Had complimentary breakkie in hostel which was tea & toast. Basic but it did the job.
We were collected by Rock Tour bus and our guide Rachelle just after 6am. Noticed early on that there were nearly 900,000 kms up on the bus. Only in Oz!
We checked into Rock Tour office (again!!) before proceeding with our long drive to Kings Canyon!
We had an introduction game on the bus where we had to say into the onboard microphone our name, where we were from, a travellers tip for our home country, our best/worst travel experience, type of music we liked, superpower wish, our camping skills and our first/last kiss. Was interesting to learn about people we just met in this way! Good game!
We were then passed special markers and we were allowed draw on all windows (we could draw anything, only rule was we had to write our names on window neatest us) - Carol was in her element now it was arts and crafts time!
Carol drew our names (plus her own in Japanese), a map of Ireland and Australia with Cork, Moate and Alice Springs marked out, an Irish flag, a shamrock and green pint of Guinness.
Great effort altogether. Mary Fitzgerald would have been well proud!
We arrived in Kings Canyon for a 3 hour trek. First task, heart attack hill (that's what they actually called it for obvious reasons) and it was 100% worthy of it's name. Our guide told us great Aboriginal stories and tales which helped us gain an understanding of how they worked and hunted in those times. Amazing stuff really.
We had short stop off in Kings Creek for diesel and another 1.5 hour drive to put camp for night. We stopped off in Curtain Springs for some cheap booze (cheap-ER, was still a bit saucily priced). We also stopped for firewood which involved breaking down tree branches in the middle of nowhere and loading onto truck. I don't think anyone escaped without a cut or scrap from a branch. All part of the experience I kept telling myself.
We arrived at campsite via an unsealed road, this was to be something.
I noticed something run along the road on way into camp site (well, bush camp) and took no notice. It wasn't until we reached campsite that I noticed the actual extent of the problem-yes, a mouse infested site. f*** sake. This was a joke. Carol and I didn't feel comfortable here at all.
We got the fire going and set swags around the fire as our seats for dinner.
The fact we were there did not deter the mice-the strutted around us like we were not there. Had chilli con carne and a fee beers for dinner, next, it was the moment everyone on site was not looking forward to...setting up bed. Basically, our bed was a sleeping bag inside a swag - a kind of bigger water proof sleeping bag. It also came with a 'monster flap' which is supposed to keep insects and bugs away from your face at night. Insects, bugs and even snakes/spiders did not cross anyones mind that night. Picture this - in the middle of the bush in the middle of Australia, 20 campers lay in swags with mice crawling all over them. The guide said it was because of a mouse problem in the northern territory which stayed around longer due to the food being available to them because of the large rain fall recently. She didn't give a s***, she slept about 10 foot up on top of the trailer. We seen that they also invaded our bus (later found they have a little mouse world in the roof of the bus!) and started eating through bags for food. We were NOT a bunch of happy campers. (Never thought I could actually use that phrase in is correct context!). Didn't sleep at all thy night and couldn't even catch shooting stats because of the monster flap.