The Great Ocean Road
Lunch
In the evening we said goodbye to Rachel, PJ, Maisie and Thomas and got on the train into the centre of Melbourne again where we caught a greyhound bus (like national express) to Adelaide. The bus leaves at 8.15pm and arrives at 6am, covering about 1000kms. Unfortunately we got stuck behind a couple of really smelly people and had to hold our noses! Fortunately though the air con was freezing so after a while we couldn’t smell it too badly! We settled in for an uncomfortable nights sleep on the bus!
The coach!
13th November – We arrived at 6am in Adelaide, (having lost 30 minutes as the clocks go back half an hour here) very tired and had a 20 minute walk to our hostel from the bus station with our rucksacks on our backs! When we got to the hostel it was too early for us to check in so we pretty much zonked out on their sofas for a couple of hours until we could get into our room. When we did I then slept for a couple of hours. James was very keen to go out but since the temperature was due to be over 40 degrees I was much preferring the idea of sleeping out the heat of the day and then going out later in the afternoon. In the end I won (mainly because it is pretty hard to argue with a sleeping person) and we headed out about 2pm. We stopped by the central market on the way and bought some lovely salmon pate and bread for lunch before getting the tram to the beach which was absolutely packed! We had a dip and sunbathed for a couple of hours before getting the tram back and stopping at the market on the way back to the hostel to buy ingredients for an omlette (which turned into egg mush as we had far too much centre!) We also got a camel sausage to go into it which we tried on one of the stalls - camel is tasty! Then we got an early night as we had to be at the bus station again at 5.50am to start our Uluru tour and we had already missed a nights sleep.
14th November - We started our 1600km trip from Adelaide to Alice springs this morning. It was due to take two days and have an overnight stop in Coober Pedy, an opal mining town where most of the population live underground (where the temperature is a cool 23 degrees all year round). We would be taking The Stuart Highway, named after a Scotsman John Mcdowell Stuart, the first explorer to cross from south to north of Australia in 1860.
We got a taxi back to the coach station at 5.50am and had to wait 45 minutes for three English guys who were late! On the way out of Adelaide we saw the floats for the Christmas parade driving in convoy to their start positions for the days parade. So even though we missed the parade itself at least we got to see the floats.
En route we stopped at a salt lake, a dried up lake where only the salt is left and went for a walk out onto it. It was stiflingly hot and Steph found the extreme heat very hard to cope with so we didn’t spend long out on the lake.
The extreme heat!
Just a funny sign!
Our overnight stop was in Coober Pedy, the first thing you notice when you get near the town are the thousands of piles of earth scattered all over the countryside where miners have dug shafts looking for Opals. We pulled up outside our accommodation and went inside. It was basically a huge underground cave and it was lovely and cool – bliss!
Dinner was at the best pizza restaurant in town – mainly because it was the only one in town! Nevertheless it was hot and tasty so we were happy! After dinner we went for a quick drink in an underground bar before getting some zzzzzzz.
15th November - We had a tour of an opal mine booked this morning before we headed off. We went down into the mine tunnels and saw how the opal was mined and told many stories about the community has grown around the mines.
The rest of the day was just driving. We did stop at a roadhouse with a singing Dingo which was pretty funny. He is pretty famous around the world apparently.
A whole lot of nothing!
Arriving in Alice Springs we checked into the backpacker lodge and grabbed KFC with the tour guide whilst ranting about a very annoying woman on our tour who thought she knew everything and wanted to be everyones mother!
16th November - We were picked up from our hostel bright and early to begin our 3 day Rock Tour. On this tour we were going to get to see Kings Canyon, Kata Tjuta, and Uluru. Some may still know it a Ayers rock but its name was changed a few years back when the aboriginals leased the area for 99 years to the government in a deal the required them to change its name back to its original aboriginal name Uluru.
We stopped at a camel farm this morning and some of the tour rode the camels but we weren’t too fussed as we had already rode elephants in Thailand. We also stopped to pick up ciders for the trip at a roadhouse. Damn it expensive over here!
Arriving at the national park we went straight to the cultural centre to have a look around. We weren’t allowed to take photos in here so not much to tell or show I’m afraid.
About 10km from Uluru are the Olgas, rocks formed in a similar way to Uluru but without as much importance to the locals and each rock not as large, although there are more of them. Uluru Is a monolith (one solid rock) whereas these are not. We walked up to a lookout and took pictures, not that interesting really.
We then headed back to Uluru to watch the sun go down over Uluru. As the sun drops to the horizon the rock is supposed to light up red and look as though it is glowing but…. It was very cloudy and nothing happened. The sparking wine and crackers made up for the disappointment a little bit though. (we had an upgraded tour because some people had bought a more expensive package, so we all reaped the benefites!)
We got to our camp tonight and slept under the stars in swags (bed rolls). The stars were amazing and we could see thousands, including the milky way stretching across the sky. Truly amazing.
17th November - It was a 3.40am wake up today and ready to leave the camp by 4.40am to go and see the sun rise at Uluru (Ayers Rock). We were a bit skeptical as yesterdays sunset was such a let down. We were both absolutely shattered and we knew this was going to be a very long day! The sunrise was beautiful and we watched it for half hour or so. I was snap happy hoping to get a good picture but the photos don’t really do it justice. There were hundreds and hundreds of tourists doing exactly the same thing as us, it was very busy, for some reason I was surprised by this but odiously it is a very popular spot.
We now had a choice of walking half way round, all the way round (10km) or climbing the rock. The climb is very much frowned upon by the aboriginals. They really don’t like people doing it so me and Steph decided we would do the 10km full base walk.
It was 7am when we started the base walk and it was already starting to heat up. We had 2 and a half hours to do the walk, but this turned out to not be enough time and a lot of us were late back to the bus. The walk is supposed to be spiritually enlightening but for us all it was was hard bloody work. The rock is amazing from a distance and amazing close up but waking all the way round it in the heat was not all that enjoyable. We made it though and did see some cave paintings, aboriginal cooking caves, teaching caves and a waterhole on the way round.
In some areas you are not allowed to take pictures because there are a few sacred sites that the locals use for ceremonies. What makes these sites so sacred we will never know as to know the stories you have to be brought up in the aboriginal way of life.
We returned to camp and went for a swim in the pool (yes, this camp site had a pool!) which was really needed after all the walking. We all cooked dinner and it was a girl in the groups birthday so we threw her a little party and hade cake, balloons and sparklers!
We played games around the camp fire this evening. And tried to get an early night. Again we slept in Swags under the stars, however the stars weren’t as amazing as last night.
18th November - Today was Kings Canyon day. Again, guess what? Got up way before 6am and took the short drive to the canyon. The tour had a 6km walk around the rim of the canyon planned. But the first challenge was to walk up what they call “heart attack hill” to the top of the canyon. Kings Canyon was a big surprise, it was very impressive. We were very lucky with the weather as it was cloudy and relatively cool. It was nowhere near as hot as yesterday at Uluru.
`I will let the pictures do the talking again, but we both really enjoyed the walk. Much more fun than yesterdays Uluru walk.
Heart Attack Hill
Pigmy Koala :-)
We returned to our tour start point in Alice Springs and this evening we went out for dinner with the tour group which was nice but left early as we knew we had to be up at a silly hour in the morning ready to start our next tour.
No comments:
Post a Comment