Hey Everybody!

Sam here being productive and bringing you up to date with a bit more blogging. I'm going to tell you about our outback adventure, our Groovygrape tour to Uluru and beyond!

Amy's auntie Jean drove us to our pick up point in Adelaide for 6.15am where we said goodbye and thanks for having us before waiting for our bus to arrive. After some confusion over where exactly we shoudl be waiting for the bus the tour guide, Flick, came and found us, asking Amy if she was Sam...fortunately Amy twigged on and explained she was Amy but she did know the before mentioned Sam. So all good. We bundled onto the bus, chose our seats (at the front, more room to stretch out) and met our cushions (I wasn't sure whether this was a good thing or not, good that we'd been provided with them, bad that the road was so truly horrendous that we'd need them...fortunately they were for sleeping on, not due to road conditions). Anyway, we were away! We stopped briefly to refuel and pick up some drinks for the evenings, apparently a cold beer and a campfire was the best combination so we thought we ought to try it out for ourselves. Anyway, we all nipped into the bottleshop then waiting outside while Flick drove round the block as no parking spaces for a mini bus and trailer. So when we saw her coming we were ready to jump on quick and hit the road again, 'Everyone here?' asks Flick, 'Yeah' we all chorus back. And away...for approximately 3 minutes, 'No, hang on, the Italian guy is missing' (we don't know each others' names yet), 'What?!', 'Yeah, he's not here'...U-turn...fortunately he's waiting looking none too panicked outside the bottleshop, he knew we'd notice eventually and come back for him. Oops. On the road again and this time with everybody that should be on the bus on the bus. And pretty much, for the next 8-9 hours we are driving. We stop for a short lunch break, which was very nice and consisted of meat or veggie sandwiches with salad (we all help to make the meals and wash up, we're carrying most of our food with us and by the end of the trip we're pretty good). This was also the point where 'plate wafting' was pioneered. Due to having plastic plates and pretty shoddy teatowels we quickly learn it is quicker to waft the plates in the sun to dry them than it is to attempt wiping the water around with the teatowel. Genius. And it kept the flies away too. I did a little over enthusiastic wafting though and smacked Claus with a plate. Luckily he was unhurt and the plate was confiscated and I learned to waft a little less vigourously. And back to the road. Now I wish I could tell you we saw roos bouncing nect to teh bus, but since most of us where asleep/ reading or aslee again, we didn't. We did keep looking out for them but sensibly they were keeping away from a major road, one with a heavy flow of traffic at about 2 cars and one roadtrain per hour. So really pretty hectic for the outback. Looking out the window was amazing though, the earth is red and there is very little out there. Lots of clumps of spinifex grass, which is spiny as the name suggests and a few acacia trees, some looking more dead than others. And that's it, for miles and miles and miles. We came across some salt plains too, which are the remenants of the Agegean (I think that's right...or is that in Greece?) sea which was what Australia used to be billions of years ago, a great sea. Well anyway, some of this water got trapped, the salt came to teh surface and voila, salt plains. They look like ice though and are really crunchy to walk on. They also taste very salty...come on, we had to try it! We also crossed The Ghan railway line, the train wasn't coming though but I think it runs every few days or so. It take a couple of days to get anywhere anyway lol.

And again. back on the road until at about 6pm we rolled into Coober Pedy. The most unusual place you have ever imagined. Coober Pedy is famous for being one of Australia's leading opal producers. So pretty much the only people who live here are miners or people working for the opal tourist industry. It is in teh middle of nowhere and looks simlar to the surface of the moon (maybe, I've never seen the moon so I'm surmising here). But I think that's what I imagine the moon to look like. Pretty desolate, craters and low rising hills, dust, rocks and that's it. No cheese Gromit. It gets pretty hot out here too, commonly 40C in the shade and anybody's guess out of the shade. But it's also pretty chilly at night, due to middle of nowhere/ prime desert location. SO the locals have come up with an ingenius plan...live underground! And they do, at least half and pretty much all of the year round population live in 'dugouts', houses in the side of hills. It's not expensive to live there either, a shared dugout between 3 might cost you $20 a week rent. So if you go for the caveman existance it'll be right up your street. Actually its not bad, we stayed in our underground digs for the night and it was very peacefull and dark, once the lights were off that was it. But I think I'd miss windows. That night we went for pizza (where they gave us some complimentry pudddings before our pizza...which we ate before dinner as we were hungry) and then we went to an underground bar. We had been told to stay as a group too as its not got the safest reputation in the world, and there are a lot of exposed holes/ mine shafts that you can easily fall down. Fortunately we were all okay and returned to our cave (sorry, dugout) safely. P.S. I'm adding this is...Cobber Pedy's first tree was a metal one as they don't have trees. It was constructed to show kids what trees looked like. Now they've got some real ones too. Oh yes, and water there is the most expensive in Australia. You even have to pay for tap water in a bar.

The next morning (we couldn't tell as no natural light) we got up and went on our tour of the opal mine. It was a really good tour and we got to see a typical 'dugout' which was pretty comfortable actually. We also got to go into the mine and were told a lot about opals and mining them. Its a pretty bizarre existance if you ask me. You apply to the Government for your plot, which come in two sizes 50m x 50 m or slightly larger and which costs you the grand total of $175 for the year. Of course, renting of equipmant is more and you must mine your plot at least 40 hours a week or they can take it off you, but other than that, thats it. You just go and find opals. Whatever you find in your plot you can keep, and you can sell your plot or buy someone else's if you're not doing too well. Of course there's the chance that someone else comes in, finds $100,000 worth of opals and you have no claim on them whatsoever, even if you only sold your mine yesterday. It's pretty much luck really. In fact, it's only luck. There ios not scientifically proven way of finding them, they don't show any clues or show up on any fancy equipment. So you take your preferred method (dynamite or a big drill) and away you go. Crazy! Anyway, we had a look in teh shop and saw some very nice jewellery, the most expensive piece cost about $20,000. The cheapest costing $15. I resisted buying anything but saw a nice necklace which if it had been slightly smaller I think I'd have bought. We then went out to do some 'noodling', this is the technical term. The less technical terms are 'grovelling around in a big pile of rocks trying to find some opals'. We just found rocks. Although Rachael found something which looked more opalesque so she's kept that. She could be carrying a small fortune with her though. Some backpackers a few years ago found $75,000 worth of opal while they were noodling. So we weren't without hope.

And back to the road again, pretty much another full day of driving before deciding where we were setting up camp for the night. We camped right on the South Australia/ Northern territory boarder and had fun in the morning sitting on the (large) sign so we could be half in one, half in the other. Hehe! At camp we had to collect firewood, in the dark, so eventful but everyone returned unharmed and in one pice. Apart from Ho (Korean guy) who had cut his hand on a bit of wood and was bleeding quite a bit. Fortunately we had enough first aid kits and bandages to mummify his arm completely (actually Flick did all this, we would have wrapped up his whole arm possibly in our enthusiasm). Dinner was nice...the carnivores had roo balls...that's kangaroo mince made into balls, not some other Aussie delicacy. But Marco, or stranded Italian, kept asking whether I wanted to taste them, vegetarian didn't really sink in, bless. After dinner we stood around our campfires and chatted before hitting our swags. Similar to a tent but without poles. We slept on the floor (they have a thin mattress in them) inside our sleeping bags. Pretty cosy really, although absolutely freezing in the morning when you have to get up before the sun is up. Brrr!

Guess what happened next....yeah, that's right, on the road again. Driving is a theme of the trip, but I told you, it's a big place! Our drive today was to Uluru (Ayers Rock) and we arrived about 2pm. When we got there we went to the cultual centre and read a little about its history and its significance to the local people. Then we were given the choice to climb it. It's not the most culturally sensitive decision so we decided not to, but a quite a lot of our group of 17 decided they would. 12 of them in fact! Flick was pretty amazed as in all her time of doing the trip she's only had 4 people climb it. But anyway, we went to look at some of the stuff round the bottom of the rock, the rock paintings mainly. We all got to sit in a circle and listen to teh dreamtime stories too, which were pretty cool. The rock art was good too, very old, anywhere up to 40,000 years old. Which was pretty incredible really. We waited for the climbers to return before setting off to teh sunset spot....full of tourists lol. Some even had champagne which was provided on their coach tour (s;lightly different to our trip), but hey ho. The sunset was pretty spectacular, although the pictures don't do it justice. The rock is very red and gradually changes to purple then a mauve type colour before grey. Unfortunately my camera was having none of this and portrayed it as reddish for the majority of the time. All good though, it tried its best :-) From sunset we headed to camp to find that the other Groovy grape guide had stolen our spot. Flick wasn't impressed and neither were we as we'd unpacked all our wood collected earlier in teh day and our swags....Levi (the other guide) said he didn't realise anyone else was staying here...really? And what's all this stuff then? He was new though so we didn't take him back as firewood, instead we collected our wood and went to fiind us a new, bigger and better spot. Upon arrival at the BEST spot in the site we cooked burritos - yum, and Marco lit a fire. We'd already collected the wood, as you know, because Kjata Tjuta is a national park and so you can't go burning trees etc. So Marco lights a fire, wanders over to the nearest Eucalypus tree and pulls some leaves off (they're oily they'll burn well)...nooo! Chucks them on the fire and whoosh, they burn well. Unfortunately they burn a little too well and teh nearest overhanging tree is in severe danger of being scorched/ setting alight. So we move Marco away from the bonfire and set him onto cutting tomatoes instead...much less hazardous!

In the morning we were woken at half 5 to watch the sunrise over Kjata Tjuta (Cat-a Jute-a) and we could see it rising over Uluru too. Again, amazing, but freezing. All good though, Flick's made us pancakes for breakfast!! Nikki, one of the London/ southern crew forgets her camera, 'I forgot my camera, innit, my mum's gonna kill me, like' One of the funniest people I have met (possibly because of the accent too lol). Anyway, today we go on a walk round KT (The Olgas), which is really good. Lots of steep climbs but worth it for the views at the top. Amy thought she could see a surfboard in one of the caves that are there...she couldn't. WHy would a surfboard be in the middle of the desert? And it was quite far away so do we really trust someone with dodgy eyesight? I'll leave it up to you. In the afternoon we walked round Uluru, which is about a 10km walk, it's really a huge rock! It was really good but then got a little monotonous, but everyone was really happy to get all teh way round. There was a lot of flies around too, which were annoying but tended to settle on your back, so at least they weren't trying to get into your ear (which was a favourite of theirs). Amy moaned on this walk quite a lot (so to cheer her up I made her sing baby bumblebee - I think it worked as she stopped complaining soon after that). I'm not sure what to tell you about the walk really, it was amazing seeing the rock from all angles but you'd be better to look at the pictures on Facebook. It's ever changing though, constantly different and changing colour with the sun (depending on time of day/ season etc), Beautiful.

The next day we drove to Kings Canyon and had a free afternoon. We chose to play tennis as there was a court where we were staying. It was good fun but none of us were particularly good. I've got a good lob though, I can lob it out the court with little to no effort. Fantastic skills. In the evening we watched the sun set over Kings Canyon from a little viewing platform. We also discovered that it was very easy to get splinters from teh rope surrounding the platform. Nikki discovered this (as accident prone member of group she was bound to be first) but after issuing a warning to everyone we were surprised to get 2 more splinter incidents. We also hid Flick's swag on the top of the bus this night, she'd tricked us earlier in the night about Claus getting into trouble with the shop manager when trying to buy beer. So she desrved it. We all played Ring of Fire this night and did some serious Team Dingo bonding. This was a lot of fun but resulted in most of us going to bed at about 2am. Not good for a sunrise walk the next day.

Up before the birds...no hangover, yeah! Bit of a climb (nicknamed heart attack hill) to get up to Kings Canyon to see the sun rise. Munching of jam sandwiches for breakfast and then a 3 hour walk. Another really good walk though with plenty of fun photo oppurtunities and rock edge surfing (not me...no way!) we made it round to The Garden of Eden, a little oasis in the middle of the canyon. Normally you are able to swim in this but there was varely any water left in it, so instead we looked, took photos and carried on walking. We also got to hang our heads over a sheer rock face, which was fun, Amy wanted her photo took incredibly quickly however! After our walk we drove into Alice Springs (which is still a fair distance - 400kms away). We all went out for a farewell dinner and because we were shattered went to bed early. We saw a freight train and had to wait 10 mins for it to pass - they pull up to 100 trucks and they take ages. So the next night we went out for a proper goodbye. Lots of fun and a very strange bar...complete with a train set road the ceiling. Another place where you are not safe to walk alone at night - so we didn't. As a group of 7+ we felt pretty safe. (Amy and I explored the flying doctor service during teh day - its pretty amazing, the planes are kitted out like mini intensive care units - they even carry onboard incubators).

Anyway, I'm losing teh will to type anymore, so I'll stop for now, oh, the flight back to Sydney was good though, I had a window seat and could see the desert below for most of the flight since it wsa so clear. Amazing, and huge! And saw the bride and opera house from teh air too, unfortunately I was too slow with my camera. Rubbish!

Much love xxx