Day 30: 30/1/13
I finally had some sleep last night. There were two guys in the room but they were in bed early enough too. I was talking to one of them, a young German, for a while and he had been in The hostel for a week looking for work and he said it was that quiet all week. There was only one night that the six beds in the room were full!
I was picked up outside the hostel okay anyway. We only had a few more to pick up after me. Th driver is called Dan and seems to be full of chat! He had window markers and got the person in the front seat to write questions on the window- name, country, age, language, favourite thing in oz, last kiss, drunk story and craziest thing you've ever done. We all had to go up to the front and tell our stories, which was a good way to get to know people. Noone had stories that were too mad! There's a lot of Germans, Swiss, Swedes, two Australians, an Italian, a girl from Belgium... I think that's it. There's 19 on the bus altogether. There's a good few that are 18/19, another lot around 25/26. There's a girl that's 29 and a woman that wouldn't say her age but she's def well in her thirties at least. So we have a decent mix. There are only four guys though so the girls are taking over!
We stopped first at a Camel farm. There were some baby camels and lots of big camels, an emu, two kangaroos and a dingo. We only spent a few minutes there walking around. There was a whole bus of older people getting camel rides.
When we got back on the bus he passed around the markers for us to decorate our windows. We had to write our name and most people Put a flag or something of where theyre from. Some people were really good, drawing kangaroos, dolphins, surfing, Ayers Rock, etc. I kept mine Irish enough with a shamrock, music notes and drink!
We pulled up at a petrol station then. Apparently it's one of the most central places in Australia. There's different ways of calculating the centre it seems and depending on which way you calculate it, this is one of the centres.
The driver was telling us then that aboriginals have been living in Australia for 60,000 years at least. There were over 250 aboriginal cultures but now only about 20% have survived. We should hear some stories tomorrow I think, but generally the aboriginals won't tell you their history as they consider us white people too young, we haven't been on the land long enough.
It was about 6 hours driving in total to get to Kings Creek station. The only plan for the day was to chill out. We had lunch first. The driver has everything in containers in the bus so we made wraps today.
There was a pool on the campsite that we all sat around. We were a few hours sitting so it was a good way to get talking to people. The only problem was that there are 7 Germans who talk German to each other and 5 Swedes who talk Swedish to each other. They all can speak English so hopefully they'll get out of that habit.
We walked a few minutes down the desert then to watch the sunset. We were on a hill so we could see for miles around that there was absolutely nothing there- red sand and green trees. There were actually some camels there too roaming around. They looked to be wild, but I don't know! The sun went down really, really fast- you could almost see it going down bit by bit.
Dinner was ready when we came back- yummy chile con carne! Then we had to learn how to use our swags. They are sleeping bags really but are made from more heavy duty material and have a mattress inside. We're still sleeping on the ground, outside in the desert. Some people were worried about spiders and snakes but I just didn't think about it!
We slept out under the stars which was really cool. It was lovely to lie looking up at them! They are quite bright. The guide showed us the Southern Cross, Orion and Taurus.
We were in 'bed' by 9:30 as we have to get up at 4! We had to get all our stuff ready for the morning and get everything packed up again or put it inside the swag, incase of spiders and dingos!!