Greetings! Ive had an action packed, exciting and exhausting couple of weeks since leaving Melbourne. I booked a tour which took me from Melbourne along the scenic Great Ocean Road and through the Grampian mountain range to Adelaide over 3 days. We then spent a day in the Barossa Valley in Adelaide doing a tour of the local wineries, before embarking on our 7 day tour through the outback to and desert to the very heart of Australia. In total, we journeyed approximately 6000km from Melbourne where I began to Alice Springs where I ended. In context, it is about 16000km from here to London. The Great Ocean Road is one of the most scenic drives you can go on in Australia, and there are some beautiful countryside views and sights of rock stacks in the sea. The most famous of these is the 12 apostles, although there are only 11 now since one of them collapsed last year! It was a very picturesque route along the south coast but unfortunately we got some pretty cold weather and english looking skies. There are rock stacks like the apostles all along the coast, and to be honest by the end I was a little rock stacked out! But there were some which had some interesting stories behind them. London Bridge (i have photos of all of these up now) was the name given to one rock stack which was connected to the mainland by a rock arch. However, the bridge collapsed leaving a couple stranded on one of the rock stacks on the sea. They were saved by a rescue helicopter but scurried away from the press after they made it to the mainland. It turns out that they were having an affair and were out there having a secret romantic liason which ended up being all over the papers! There is a more sinister story behind one of the rock stacks at the Bay or Martyrs, also known as Massacre Bay. It is allegedly the scene of a massacre of Aboriginal people, where a whole tribe had weights tied to their feet and were then thrown off the cliff. This was a punishment for the Aboriginals who had been hunting the sheep and cattle that the British had introduced. In Aboriginal culture, however, there is no such rigid ownership over animals, so to them they were well within their rights to hunt anything roaming in the wild. It was one of a series of stories I learnt about the disgraceful treatment of the indigenous people of this country, and a lack of understanding of their culture. The Great Ocean road stretches for around 245km and was built by returning soldiers from the First World War. It goes in the direction of Adelaide out of Melbourne, but stops several hundred kilometers before the South Australian capital. Between where it ends and Adelaide there was one main stop off for us, the Grampian mountain range. You can see some beautiful views from the top of Mount Hollow which we climbed, 350m above sea level. Once again though, one of the things that left a lasting impression on me was the Cultural Centre where we learnt about the Aboriginal creation stories, and heard more about the mistreatment of the natives of this country. Most shocking was this fact, pictured in my photos, that by the 1960s 98% of the Aboriginal population had been wiped out. Much of it of course was from disease, much of it was due to massacres. 98%, they were almost extinct. Furthermore, there was a quote from a board member of the committee to deal with the Aboriginals which said: "If I am asked my advice I recommend... that the blacks when necessary should be coerced just as we coerce children and lunatics who cannot take care of themselves". It is this mentality which spawned what is now referred to as the 'stolen generation'. The state, in an attempt to assimilate the indigenous people and wipe out the Aboriginal culture, removed children from the Aboriginals and attempted to bring them up in the white western way. Hundreds of Aboriginals from this period do not know who their family are. The view of Aboriginal people as inferior is summed up by the fact that they were only recognised as citizens in 1967. Prior to that, they were covered under the Flower and Fauna act. Imagine occupying a land for thousands and thousands of years only to have a foreign power invade and then have to fight to even be granted the status of a citizen. But more on that later. 3 days after leaving Melbourne we arrived in Adelaide, and I only had one full day there before embarking on the next part of the journey to the centre of Australia. That one full day was taken up by a winery tour of the nearby Barossa Valley. The most famous of these was Jacobs Creek, but we visited about 5 or 6 different wineries throughout the day. I cant be sure how many exactly because we were wine tasting at every place which got us a little merry! I learnt a bit about the wine making process and which wines i like, but being a backpacker on a budget its still goon all the way! The journey to the outback commenced the next day (complete with hang over), and after a couple of hours we were out of Adelaide, and it would be a week until I saw a proper city again. For most of our trip we were in the outback or desert and literally in the middle of nowhere. One night we spent in swags beneath the starts of the biggest cattle station in the world, Anna Creek. It is bigger than Belgium and encompasses 6 million acres of land. If u were to draw a circle around where we stayed, with a radius of 100km, the population would be 10. TEN!! The nearest hospital and police station were 200km away. We were truly isolated. And perhaps its the isolation that makes people in this part of the world... how can i put it politely... a little eccentric. In the middle of the desert you'd find 2 planes artistically suspended, a Xylophone made of hubcaps, a hollowed out bus suspended like a bridge, and some pretty odd characters. One of whom was Dinky, the singing dingo. When someone played the piano he'd jump up on the keys and start howling, apparently hes world famous now! The most bizarre man I ever met though, not only in this short trip but in all my travels, was Cornelious, aka Talc Alf. Talc lives in the middle of nowhere, in a few loosely put together shacks which he calls his home. He seems like a fictional TV character, complete with quirky name, disheveled appearance, and Santa Claus style beard. He was babbling on about the origin of words and greek and egyptian mythology as if he knew what he was on about but he was just a little bit crazy. He got well excited when he heard I was Egyptian and gave me a free sticker! Most interestingly in his 'home' was his cycle powered washing machine (see my photos of the outback!)! The outback is that kind of place where the people do seem slightly odd. A lot of them anyway. But theres something liberating about being that far from civilisation and sane people! Sleeping under the stars in swags was an amazing experience. We are robbed of the beauty of the night sky in England. I just lay there and smiled looking up, there were literally thousands of bright stars, I had no idea it could be like that. But anyway, we proceeded though small outback villages on our trip to Uluru, and the most notable amongst these was Coober Pedy, the biggest opal mine in the world. Here people live underground in homes dug into the rock where its cooler. We went to a bar and even a church which was under the rock, as well as staying in a bunker ourselves. Sounds bizarre i know, but it was really cool (in terms of temperature... well both meanings actually) compared to outside... see the pics! But onto the main aim of this tour- Uluru, the very heart of Australia. I found Uluru quite extraordinary. Its in the middle of the outback, surrounded by a landscape of flat red sand, spinifex and bush. Then Uluru. Its almost as though this enormous rock was just dropped from above. Its sides are so steep that it seems as though it came from somewhere else rather than being part of the surrounding landscape. Standing before it you realise just how bit it is, and theres always something humbling about being in the presence of something greater than yourself. We arrived at Uluru for sunset and woke up early the following morning to watch sunrise. It seems to have an energy all of its own, and this is partly due to the myriad shades of red that it goes through throughout the day. Some people were left underwhelmed by it, expecting it to radically transform in colour, but i saw it glow. Another reason that there seems to be something special about Uluru is of course due to what it means to the Aboriginal people. To the local tribe, the Anangu, it is a sacred holy site, like a cathedral to a Christian, for example, and there is always a certain energy when in the presence of something which has such spiritual and religious significance. This is why it riles me so much to see heathen philistine tourists climbing Uluru. Its tantamount to spitting on the Aboriginal culture, kicking them when they're down after 150 years of shameful degradation. It says it on the ticket, it says it at the cultural centre, it says it in the brochure, it even says it at the very point where tourists begin the climb: It is requested that you respect the wishes of Anangu by not climbing Uluru. Why are their religious beliefs less valid than any other? In their culture, only the most senior men can make the sacred climb, and yet here any tourist who wanted to tick the 'I climbed Ayers rock' box was scaling it. The fact is its the most literal and physical manifestation of the Western world trampling all over Aboriginal culture. The Aboriginals own the land now but they were made to lease it back to the government for 99 years, so they must endure this humiliation of tourists stamping their feet over this sacred site for many years to come. The same applies to Kata Tjuta (the olgas) although people dont climb it, i guess its not as big of a tourist attraction. Kata Tjuta is like a red mountain range, and many people find it even more spectacular than Uluru. Its more round and shapely compared with the squareness of Uluru, but both are beautiful in their own right. Both are natural phenomena that geologists struggle to explain. Uluru is not 'just a big rock'. Its a massive rock, 350m high and 9.4km in circumference, in a plethora of shades of red in the middle of nowhere, with immense cultural significance and energy. It is the heart of Australia and the sacred site of the oldest surviving culture on earth. The only thing left to see once we left the Uluru-Kata Tjuta national park was Kings Canyon. Spectacular once again, although exhausting as well as we hiked across it for hours in 35 degree heat. The views from the top were amazing though, and well worth the exertion. All that remained was Alice Springs, where we had a farewell night out with all our group. There was derek the racist tour guide ("if u eat all that curry you'll end up as brown as munni (Indian)"!!!), 4 danes, 2 Germans, 2 S Koreans and 3 other people from England and a yank, and on the whole a good bunch! So it was farewell to the group id spent the last week or 10 days with, and farewell too to the outback and the great journey that took me there. Now im back in Sydney, recuperating after about 11 days of getting up at 5 or 6am! After a short while here it will be on to country 8 of my travels, New Zealand. Take care all, stay in touch. Si