Hey, Have arrived in Perth now after a great few days at Uluru (Ayers Rock). We are staying at my aunt Colette's and it is absolute luxury to be staying in a house after 4 months of hostels! We are enjoying not having 10 strangers in our bedroom for once. Colette made us a roast dinner to welcome us yesterday which was so amazing after so long without a home cooked meal! Uluru was great. We stayed in Yulara which is the Ayers Rock resort. It is really small but you are allowed to use all the facilities for all the different hotels. As we were staying in the backpack (ie. skanky) resort we made the most of this by visiting all the hotels and checking out the best pools! The outback looks exactly like you imagine it with nothing around for miles and miles apart from small little bushes and trees. The sky was brilliantly blue and the ground was really red so it was completely different but really cool to visit. We got an amazing view of Uluru as we landed which was cool. We were only there one full day so we had a pretty busy one. We got up nice and early and were picked up at sunrise. We drove to Uluru and saw it as the sun was going up. It was absolutely beautiful, the sky looked gorgeous and the rock looked really dramatic against the morning sky. Then we drove out to Kata Tjuta (formerly known as The Olgas). This was a range of rocks like Ayers rock. It was really dramatic as well as it was so massive and so imposing compared to the flat scenery around it. It is really sacred to the Aboriginals so we we'ren't allowed to visit it all but we did a valley of the winds walk which was lovely. The sky was really blue and the rocks just looked so red it didn't look real. The guides pointed out the various plants and creatures. We saw a Euro which is a type of Kangaroo and it had a Joey in its pouch which was really cool - though the Joey was massive so I wouldn't have fancied carrying it around myself! We then went back to the resort for a while before we headed off for our Uluru base tour. We went to the cultural centre first to learn about the Aboriginals who own the national park and to learn about Uluru. Uluru is really sacred to them and they dont like you to climb it and it is illegal to take rock away. There were amusing letters in the centre that people had written who had taken bits of rock away only for their whole life to fall apart as they thought they were cursed!! They were begging for the rock to be put back so there life could get back to normal! After the cultural centre we did a base tour which was really interesting. We saw some watering holes and some caves with aboriginal paintings in it. Then we went to the sunset viewing area to see the sunset. We had wine and nibbles so it wasn't too bad and we watched the sunset. The sunset was absolutely gorgeous because you could see for miles and we had a great view of the rock. All in all it was a wicked few days and definitley a worthwhile stop off. I'm just glad we didn't do it in the midst of summer though as i think the flies would have driven me demented!