We flew from Cairns to Alice Springs where we picked up for our 6 day tour taking us to the Red Centre and then onto Adelaide. We got picked up at lunchtime ready for our 450km drive to our campsite just outside Kings Canyon. This was our first night sleeping under the stars in swags. After making dinner and having sing songs around the camp fire we settled into them.

We were up early the next morning ready for our hike around Kings Canyon. The views across the Canyon were amazing, they were well worth taking on the flys and the heat to get there. It was worth it even more when we reached a water hole to cool off in. After lunch we drove another 300km to our campsite near Uluru. We arrived just in time for our first sunset - It was breathtaking! Even in the half an hour we were there, the rock changed colour so many times. That night we had a thunderstorm which soaked everyone at 3 in the morning. It was a bit annoying as we had a lack of sleep but it was fun.

This didn't set us up well for the next day as we hadn't realised that we had two 10km walks to do. The first walk was around Kata Tjuta (meaning many heads) aka The Olgas. The second was the base walk around Uluru which was unbelievable. We had seen so many pictures but nothing can prepare for the sheer enormity of it. We did the base walk in the heat of the day (mid 50c's in the sun) but it was so worth it. After dinner most people headed off into their swags, the few of us that stayed up went to a viewpoint to watch the lightning over Uluru.

One of the guides who had been doing the tours for 5 years said it was only the second time he had seen rain on Uluru, so we felt more privileged than unhappy.

On day 4 we had planned to climb Uluru but the park rangers seem to find any reason to close the walk. There was a cloud over it so at first it was the threat of rain and when that passed, the temperature was over 36c which is the limit for doing the walk. It does however hold a lot of improtance to the Aboriginal people and out of respect they ask you not to climb it. So in a way it was good we didn't do it and offend the locals. We got back to camp and packed up everything for another long journey (750km - 12 hours) to Coober Pedy. We arrived at about 11pm in time for pizza and a taste of their nightlife.

Coober Pedy is the Opal Capital of Australia. Most of the houses are built into the side of hills which means they have a more comfortable temperature of around 22c to 26c all year round. Residential mining has stopped due to safety laws but there are no laws about creating news rooms for your house. One guy has 44 underground rooms. As you can imagine he is very wealthy now!

After our first night underground we had a tour of a mine, which showed us a traditional house with an ensuite mine! We learnt how opals were formed and how they are cut and put into jewellery.

After our tour we had another long drive down to the Flinders Ranges. Our journeys were usually lengthend by our guide chasing lizards and stopping for wildlife. We saw loads of cool stuff as the pictures show.

We stopped in a little town called Quorn. It was a really nice hostel and we had it all to ourselves. The next day we went for a 9km walk up a mountain in the Flinders Ranges. The flies had dissappeared this far south but along came the ants... we ended up running parts of it otherwise they would run up your legs and bite you. We reached the summit and the views were spectacular - it was so clear we could see for miles around including the salt lakes which used to be a huge inland ocean.

This left a short drive of 300km to Adelaide after lunch.