6th July 2007

Today we got up and checked out of our hostel in Perth and waited for our shuttle bus at 8am. Got on the 10.30am flight to Ayers Rock which took an hour and a half. Landed at the tiniest airport ever with absolutely nothing about! Even worse than Skiathos airport and thats saying something! This place is deserted. No signs of civilisation - THE OUTBACK! - Brilliant! Picked up our rental car - Toyota Corolla brand new, and headed straight for Uluru. Well what can i say - breathtaking! I have never seen anything like it! For all those people who say "It's just a rock" - are unbelievably mistaken, it is SO much more! It looks different from every angle, and is a different colour every 10 seconds! LOTS of photos taken, i got a bit snap happy! Then headed to our campsite where we managed to blag to only pay $10 a night to stay in the overflow carpark!! haha! Went to the supermarket to buy bread and cheese for tomorrows lunch. For tea we went to the main resort where there was loads of people, of all ages, out door heaters, pool tables and a guy playing live music with guitars and didgeridoos! The atmosphere was fantastic! We shared a double cheeseburger and braved a Kangaroo Wrap! It was nice but quite a tough meat and swamped in BBQ sauce, mmm. Back to the car for our 'adventurous' nights sleep! Under a zillion stars, i have never seen a sky like it! Unbelievable. Just goes to show that no industrial towns = no pollution. We are officially proper travellers now sleeping in cars it gets that bad!!

7th July 2007

Last night it was UNBELIEVABLY cold in the car, so hardly got any sleep at all as we were constantly freezing, im sure we were blue! Today has been absolutely amazing, up at 6.30am to watch sunrise over Uluru - which was beautiful, i cannot describe in words just what this place is like. It changed through so many colours from dark rusty colour, through ochre to a glowing almost fluorescent orange! After that we headed to the Olgas (Kata-Tjuta). Stopped in the car park and had our cheese butties. (For breakfast yes - yum exactly, haha!) Then fell asleep for an hour and a half! And let me just say, cheese really does give you nightmares! I had a shocker! After we became conscious again, we went and did the Valley of the Winds walk through the Olgas. The full circuit is 7.4km but we only went to the 2nd lookout. 'Karu' the first lookout is 1.1km from the carpark, then to 'Karingana' is a further 1.6km so around 5.4km in total. But it was very stony and steep. Then went back to the campsite for lunch, any guesses what we had?? Yep, you better believe it, MORE cheese butties. Had a shower then back to Uluru where we did the 'Kuniya Walk' which is a 1km walk to a waterhole, home of Wanampi an ancestral water snake. We also saw a rock shelter used in the past by Aboriginal people still living today, containing rock art. So they were both spectacular things to see. Then later on we drove to the sunset viewing area to watch the sunset over Uluru at 6pm. Again - just fantastic. After that we went to the supermarket and i got chocolate milk!!! woohoo! Dreading another night in the car tonight, think hats, gloves and as many layers as possible are in order!!