Sorry its been so long since we last updated but we litteraly havnt stoped. We've just completed the first leg of our tour from adalaide to darwin. We're in alice springs for 2 days before we join a new tour group to carry on to darwin. We were really lucky because our group was amazing. 24 people and we all got on really well. We had loads of different nationalities. Our first night of the tour we stoped in a sleepy little place called paricilna... im sure i didnt spell it right! anyway.. there was a pub, some accomodation, a school and a train stop. The population of parchilna is 2 people... yes thats right 2!! They own the pub and the dorm rooms. As for the school.. its closed due to lack of people! Anyway so there really wasnt much to do there apart from drink... so thats what we did. It was a great ice breaker for the group, everyone had storys to tell the next day! We had loads of early starts beacuse we had so much to cram in to 6 days... including 3000km driving! Highlights- We went to a place and did horse riding she took us on a 2 hour trek and it was amazing .. allthough i s*** myself when we had to trot on canter due to total lack of experience. The woman seemed to think it was fine that i couldnt horse ride! andway by the end of the two hours i had got to know my horse really well (called jimmy) and ended up really enjoying it. -> cooper pedy was a crazy litltle opal mining town. we stayed under ground (as do most of the town because of the heat .. it can reach upto 60 degrees in the summer! -> aires rock,(biggest rock in the world) which is actually called uluru since it was given back to the aboriginies (spelt wrong im sure). we saw sun set and sunrise at "the rock" ... it turns some crazy orange colours. We camped outside that night and the stars were awesome. we also waled round the rock ... 9km!! i dont know how but me and kathryn ended up getting lost and walking around it 1 and 3/4 of it! then we admitted defeat that we were lost and hitched a ride with another tour company to find our bus! classic! -> kings caneon. we've got some wiked pictures of that. despite kathryns hate for hiking i think she enjoyed it secretly! In the middle of it there was "the garden of eden" whcih was a complete contrast to the the rest of the place because it was really green, had palm trees and a lake to swim in. we're at Alice springs now and our group has gone there seperate ways. Last night we went out and had an amazing night out. Our group were on fire and we won loads of the competitions (i think all the other tour groups secretly wanted to be in our group!) i won a vip band which alowed me to get happy hour price drinks all night... so i was pretty popular! by 2 o clock we still had 19 people in the group in the bar... hard core! We had a group song (love generation) which we played every day on the bus and it will allways remind me of this trip! Anyway its over now. hopefully we'll get a good group next. theres a few people from our last one which are staying on too. tomorow me we're going to check out the kangeroo rehabilitation centre where u get to play with little skippys whos mothers have been run over. Apparently u can hold them for ages because they need the wamth of your body... yey il be a mum for the day! Anyho.. I probably wont update untill we get to darwin now because im sure i will be just as busy. appologies for the lack of pictures.. il go to a different tinternet cafe tomorow and try to do it there. love liz xxxxx