Date: 14th August 2011

Place: Uluru

Weather: Sunny

Ben woke us up at 5.15am by turning on all the lights. For the second day in a row I woke up when it looked exactly the same outside as when I went to sleep. We had an hour to get breakfast (which involved a lot of coffee!) and to get into the bus to take us to Uluru.

Since everyone goes to the viewing point at sunrise Ben said that we should start the walk early and get to a point on the walk where there used to be a sunrise point and be there as just us; no other tourists would be there for a good few hours. We saw the rock from really close up when it was an awesome shade of red. Uluru actually isn't red it is made of the same sand as on Whitehaven Beach so is actually perfect white. It just has a layer of red sand over the top of it.

We walked the majority of the way around it before we saw any other tourists which was awesome. We were actually taking pictures hugging Uluru when a tour group showed up. It got a lot busier towards the end, especially with a huge group of Chinese people. We were looking at a Mutitjulu Waterhole and managed to squeeze some pictures in and escape before about 40 chinese people raided the little platform. We could see them coming and legged it!

The walk around the base is actually 10.6km and we had finished it before 9.30am! Our finishing stop was at a place where you could actually climb Uluru. I would have loved to do it, apparently it looks like the moon at the top because there are loads of craters. I didn't do it though out of respect to the aboriginals. It is like if someone has you as a visitor to their home and they ask you to take your shoes off. They don't force you to do it but you do out of respect for them. It is the same thing in a way; Im a visitor in their home.

Our next stop was Kata Tjuta (aka the Olgas). It is called the Olgas because the guy that discovered them liked the mayor (or it might have been presidents) daughter who was called Olga so he named it after her. The aboriginals called it Kata Tjuta as this means many heads and there are lots of different parts to it.

Kata Tjuta, Uluru and Mt.Connor are all in a dead straight line if you look on a map and were all created by a big squeeze of Australia which pushed the land up. That's the basic version anyone I can't remember all of the details.

We only spent about an hour around the Olgas because of time issues. We went to Valley of the Winds which was a lot greener than anywhere else I had seen. It looked a lot like Uluru but a bit bumpier and with a load of gaps. There was a bit of greenery on the side of one of the rocks which was in the shape of a horse which was really cool. Everyone laughed at me when I said I wonder if someone went up there to plant it like that. I realised right at the end of what I said just what I had said…

Back at the camp site we had burgers and leftovers from dinner for lunch. We then had to pack everything up to head back to Alice Springs. Adventure Tours are told to chuck all leftover food away so that no one can charge them for food poisoning or anything. Im terrible with leftover food normally though and this was a lot of leftover food!! So I made up a couple of rolls and put some cous cous in a sponge bag! It would do me for a few days, especially when Im so tight on money!

The drive back to Alice Springs was around 5-6 hours. On the way we stopped off for a proper look at Mt. Connor and also a big salt lake. Apparently because of all the rain this past year there have been sea birds in some areas in the outback who have probably got confused. Ben even saw Pelicans in a little pond! There dog went to chase them and got scared when he saw them up close because he had never seen them before.

Ben entertained us on the way back to Alice with loads of information about Kangaroos, Koalas, Emus and Aboriginal stories. One fact I remember is that Kangaroos cant move their legs separately until they get into water when they automatically do it. They are actually really good swimmers and can fight dingos and dogs in water by keeping themselves up by wagging their tales then they will use their legs to drown the dog. A man once had to save his dog in his pool from a Kangaroo and almost got drowned by it himself!

When we checked back into the hostel in Haven, I had a shower and then Louisa and I went straight to bed. I think we slept for about 12 hours that night.