Hello everyone!

I hope you are still doing alright, I am doing not too bad myself, you know. So I have finally managed to leave Western Australia, after nearly a month there! No more hick ups and everything went according to plan after my trip to Exmouth. As you probably have seen, I have even managed to upload the photos!!!! Anyway, on Tuesday, I was scheduled to take a flight to Ayers Rock at 1:20pm so the YHA advised me that there was an airport shuttle at 11:30am. The journey takes about half an hour so there would be plenty of time. I decided against there advise and took the shuttle bus an hour earlier as I had to check out by 10am anyway, so I thought, rather than rushing everything, I might as well read the book at the airport. What a wise decision! It turned out that the shuttle was running nearly 45 minutes late and had I taken the later shuttle, I wouldn't have been able to check onto my flight and would probably still be in Perth!!!!! Loads of people missed their flights, I was just so glad that I had allowed the extra hour!

The plane was quite small with only two seats on one and three seats on the other side. And it must have been the emptiest (is this a word???) plane I have ever sat on. There were only about 20 people taking the same flight, am not sure how Qantas can make a profit on this route?!? Anyway, the flight itself was pleasant enough and took less than 2 hours. For the last half an hour or so the clouds disappeared and you could see the countryside. Well, there wasn't much to look at! It looked a bit like the bottom of a big lake or so, with just a few undulations of the sand. I was so wrong when I thought that there was a lot of nothing in Western Australia, there certainly is even more nothing in the Northern Territory! And then Uluru came into my view. What an amazing thing to see from the air. It is absolutely massive, huuuge even, and it sits in the middle of absolute flatness. No matter how the guides tried to explain its formation, it just doesn't seem realistic to be a geological feature, everything else is as flat as a pancake around there. Well, except Kata Tjuta, the other mountain range in its vicinity.

I took a tour to Kata Tjuta and Uluru the next day and got told all the Aboriginal stories about why Uluru is there and has certain features. I watched the sunset at Uluru with a glass of champagne in my hand (I do have style you know!) before catching the bus that would take me to Alice Springs.One thing though that amazed me though was that everyone has got a certain picture in their head when they think about Uluru, and that is the most photographed view of it. But if you walk around to the other sides, you will see it actually isn't a single rock but more of a range and looks totally different. Good to have seen this as well.

Take care everyone and keep smiling!
Yvonne
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