Hey everyone, here is the first blog about Australia. We arrived in Darwin at 5am after a flight with no sleep. However, our first experience of Australia was meeting a really nice local man who explained to us which buses we needed to get to town. Once we arrived in the main town centre and had dropped off our bags, we spent the morning getting ourselves set up for life in Australia - sorting out bank accounts, medicare cards, mobiles, and a tax number. We also went shopping to one of the main supermarkets here - Woolworths! And we almost fainted at the extortionate costs of everything! Unfortunately we had to return to the banks and medicare place to finish setting it all up the following day. That afternoon we went for a walk to the waterfront and around town to get our bearings.

Thanks to the financial losses from Brexit, we were not able to do the experiences we really wanted to do, like visiting Kakadu National Park, so we went to the free Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory instead and learned about aboriginal culture. We did manage to find an awesome cheap tour to visit some wetlands, and to take a boat trip down the Adelaide river to watch crocodiles in their native habitat jumping for food. It was the highlight of Darwin for me. We didn't think much of the hostel we stayed at though, it was very "laddish" and one room-mate decided to snort drugs on the windowsill in front of us. We were glad when we flew out to Alice Springs.

Alice Springs is a lovely town about 450km from Uluru (Ayres rock). We booked a week there with a three day trip to Uluru in between. We were trying to save money still so we didn't do much else there except climb Anzac Hill and take some pictures of the great views over Alice Springs and the McDonnell Ranges. The highlight, however, was the three day trip to Uluru (thankfully we had booked it online before Brexit so we were able to afford it).

On the Friday morning we were up at 5.30am to get a 6.30am pick up to take us down to Uluru. We started off with a camel ride. I have never ridden a camel so that was awesome. Then we had a nice long 5 hour journey down to our first stop - Kings Canyon. It was quite a way but we were able to see the outback in all it's beauty. It is a truly stunning place. We stopped again to collect firewood for the evenings fire and then headed to the canyon. After a steep climb to begin with, we walked 6km around the rim of the canyon and took in many spectacular views. We even got to visit the garden of Eden and a sacred waterhole. After we got back to our camp-site we did some cooking and ate kangaroo for the first time. It tasted very much like steak. Then it was time for a cider round the camp-fire and into bed. The night was cold (0 degrees), and all we had was a cheap sleeping bag and a swag (a flat tent like thing traditionally used by workers in the outback) but that was surprisingly good at keeping us warm. The only problem was laying in the wind path meant I got a cold face every time the wind blew. I am a very bad snorer and evidently kept some people awake a lot (and they kept waking me up by poking me too) so it wasn't the most restful nights sleep, but we did get to see an amazing number of stars.

The next morning was another early start - we were up at 5.30am for breakfast and to pack up camp. We then had another long drive down to Uluru itself. On the way we stopped at Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) mountains. Within them is another sacred Aboriginal site - the valley of the winds. We walked 7.5km through the valley and again saw amazing views. We had burgers made of camel too. I have never tried Camel either but they are eaten out here because they are pests (brought over in the 1800's.). Camel is delicious. That evening we went to Uluru to watch the sun set over it. Sun rise and sun set are when it looks most beautiful and although my pictures weren't very good, the experience in person was amazing. They even gave us champagne and snacks for the experience. Then we returned to camp and again slept under the stars. This time I slept away from the camp so as not to keep everyone awake with my snoring.

Our final day, Sunday, we were again up at 5.30 - this time we were racing to get to Uluru to catch the sunrise. We had breakfast, packed up and drove to a viewing spot where we were able to see the silhouette of Uluru as the sun started to come up. Then we drove to the rock and began a 10km walk around it. It was thankfully flat this time although my feet were aching by the end of it. We got to walk around it as the sun was rising over it and it was amazing. We saw aboriginal rock paintings, visited sacred waterholes and went into caves. We also learned about some old aboriginal stories. It was a great experience. We left around 10am, went back to the camp for lunch and packing up and then drove 5 hours back to Alice Springs. We stayed in Alice springs another three days and then took a greyhound bus for 6 hours, down to Cadney Park where we had planned to stay and volunteer for 6 weeks on a cattle ranch.

We arrived at Cadney park on Thursday 21st and met the owner Frankie. She took us to the cattle station and showed us around. As it's literally in the middle of nowhere, with the property covering land the size of Cornwall, the conditions were very basic. But that was a nice experience to try. No mobile phone signal, very limited internet, and with toilet and shower rooms outside the main building, we got a true outback experience. They did a BBQ on the camp-fire to welcome us and that was just the first of an entire weeks wonderful food (with meat fresh from the farm itself). It was nice to have proper home made "western" food again. The remoteness of the property also meant very clear skies with more stars than I had ever seen, and you could clearly see the milky way in all its glory. Awesome!.

The following day we were up at 7.30am to start work. We spent the first day checking the length of fence poles and preparing to build a fence. With lots of wild camels and Kangaroo's around that break the fences, they have to be constantly repaired. I got a chance to drive a 4 x 4 truth for the first time which was nerve-wracking but fun. And we saw a small scorpion with her nest of eggs. While the work was difficult and my hands hurt a lot afterwards, we were hoping to stay for six weeks.

However, that afternoon Frankie informed us that volunteers don't do the 25 hours a week as specified by Workaway, but that we would have to do full days, seven days a week. That was a breaking point for us and we decided we would have to leave as soon as post that we needed arrived. We weren't getting paid for this so we didn't want to waste our time. However, things didn't get as bad as we feared and most days we did 5-6 hours before finishing….but still without a day off. We had some interesting experiences including getting to see lots of new cows that had arrived in a road train, being de-horned. The cows were clearly in a lot of pain though. Another day we helped to walk another group of cows 10km to a paddock. We also got to feed chickens, collect their eggs and built a chicken tractor (inspired by a permaculture course I have half done), so the chickens could do the weeding for us. It worked surprisingly well. Other work we did included painting two rooms of a house, painting some outside areas of a house, weeding, raking, moving manure to fruit trees and digging holes for new trees. Ross built them a great website (which happened to be the main reason they wanted us there). Our final great experience was that they took us shooting, and we got to use rifles, a shotgun and a pistol. It was fun and I managed to hit the targets a few times.

Thankfully we didn't have to tell them we wanted to leave as they informed us after a week , that they didn't really have much else in terms of work for us, so we left on the Saturday (and thankfully my driving license had arrived in time) and headed down to Adelaide on the overnight greyhound bus - a 13 hour trip.