Hi all,

Well, frankly you are quite lucky to hear from us this week, after a week of cheating death from heat stress, dehydration, poisonous (redback) or just plain scary (huntsman) spiders, snakes, sleep deprivation or just sheer exhaustion. Yes, like true Brits we decided to venture into the Northern Territory in the height of summer and even paid for the privilege...

Cairns - Sunday 25th January

Following our blogging marathon last sunday we took a hard earned rest with an ice cold milkshake at the stunning Port Douglas marina before for one final journey along the tropical coastline to touristy Cairns.

Alice Springs - Monday 26th January (Australia day)

Landing in Alice Springs early afternoon we were struck by two things: the intense heat and the sudden invasion of buzzing flies into any/every facial orifice going - gross. In the afternoon we took a look round the ghost town that was Alice Springs on Australia Day (bank holiday), inhabited only by the alcoholic Aborigines roaming the streets... Luckily we stumbled across an Australia day party at a local pub and enjoyed a few hours watching the 'celebrations' which generally involved dressing up in flags, wigs and t-shirts emblazened with ozzie names such as Tomo, Jonno etc and drinking heavily. As the quietest, pastey-est, sober-est people in the bar we felt just a little conspicuous :)

Uluru / Ayers rock - Tuesday 27th January

Tuesday began with a rude awakening at 5am to catch our tour, after a sleepless night caused by 2am pool parties and drunken ozzie antics outside our room. However, having booked ourselves onto one tour we discovered we had been moved (and in the process, upgraded) to another tour with 'Wayoutback safaris', a smaller tour with just 12 people in a 4WD which should have cost us an extra $400 (£200) so we were feeling pretty smug. We headed out of Alice Springs watching the sunrise over the desert and travelled for most of the morning towards our bushcamp at Yulara, near Uluru (Ayers rock). During the afternoon we visited the Cultural Centre explaining the creation stories behind the rock formations (not convinced) before heading to Uluru to 'enjoy' the 2 hours / 9.6km base walk around Uluru. This would have been a walk in the park, literally, had it not been for the intense heat and lack of shade, with temperatures peaking at 51 degrees c that afternoon. With no tour guide (strangely, he had things to do that afternoon!) and few areas for shade, this was pretty torturous and its lucky that we all made out it out in one piece... In the evening we relaxed by watching the sunset over Uluru with a glass of champagne, with Phil and I raising a toast for mum's 60th birthday. The evening finished with dinner then bed - curling up in swags (sleeping bags) in the great outdoors trying to ignore the creepy crawlies and continuing heat to get some sleep. Thankfully, the flies also go to bed at night giving us a few hours of peace before sunrise when the onslaught continued...

The Olgas / Kata Tjuta - Wednesday 28th January

An even ruder awakening at 4.15am in order to travel to see sunrise over Uluru and The Olgas, however this was pretty spectacular. We then continued to The Olgas to complete the 3 hour / 8km walk through the "Valley of the Winds" all before lunch. Again the heat was a killer, peaking in the mid 40's so we were pleased to head to a local cattle station for a dip in a pool and BBQ. In the evening we headed 'wayoutback' to our bushcamp, miles from anywhere/one to set up camp around a fire and once again sleep under the stars - with a clear view of the milky way. Once again sleeping with one eye open for creepy crawlies, dingoes and wild camels - whose tracks we found throughout the camp...

Kings Canyon - Thursday 29th January

Rising at 5am we headed out for a final 7km walk, up and around Kings Canyon. Thankfully the weather and the flies relented slightly, making this a more enjoyable adventure. After lunch we started to make our way back to Alice Springs, off-roading along 100km of dirt track and stopping off to search for witchity grubs to eat (naturally, we were devastated not to find any) and to visit Dinky the singing Dingo, possibly the most bizarre experience of our lives - we will try to upload video. Back in Alice we headed out for drinks in the evening with our tour mates and paid the price for it on Friday morning.

Adelaide - Friday 30th January

A hungover and turbulent flight on Friday (due to the extreme temperatures) - even the cabin crew were asked to return to their seats... Unfortunately, having dreamt of a cooler end to the week in Adelaide we were met with mid 40's, with Adelaide breaking a 100 year record this weekend with 6 days of 40+ temperatures and still going strong. This has resulted in crumpled rail lines, power shortages, a sharp rise in sudden deaths and so on - serious stuff. Hence Friday was spent hiding indoors with the air con on full with Hayden and Christine, our friends from Synovate.

Adelaide - Saturday 31st January

A welcome visit to Henley beach in the morning, followed by more much needed air con action for the rest of the day.

Adelaide - Sunday 1st February

With the temperature dropping slightly this morning we ventured out for brunch and into Adelaide to explore on foot. However, with temperatures with rising again this afternoon Phil has enjoyed a marathon sport session from 2pm to present (9pm) with Hayden - a seamless merging of cricket into the men's tennis final...

We plan to hire a car on Tuesday to drive from Adelaide to Melbourne along the Great Ocean Road - reaching Melbourne on Friday to meet little Ben.

So all that remains is for me to distract Phil from the TV for 5 minutes to add photos - hopefully these will follow shortly... Wish me luck - Liz

Lots of love,

Liz and Phil x