Red Centre

So, after our somewhat hectic visit to Melbourne we boarded yet another plane headed to the Alice Springs, which is, give or take a few miles, slap bang in the middle of Darwin in the north and Adelaide in the south. To be honest Alice is not our kind of place. It’s a bit like a more desolate version of Strood or Gravesend or an empty seaside town but in the middle of nowhere. It was hot & dry and the main river through the town didn’t actually have any water in it. It honestly was exactly like every Castlemaine XXXX advert you’ve seen – which are justified further by the fact this is the only place we’ve seen it on sale. Our tour guide for the next few days was actually a Scottish guy who’d left Scotland 35 years ago and lived all across Oz but he thought Alice was the best place ever.

However, Alice was purely a bed for the night and somewhere to store our bags as the reason for going to the Red Centre of Oz was to visit Uluru (Ayers Rock). After a huge 300 mile journey through the back end of nowhere (we did stop off at a camel farm but I couldn’t face a camel burger at 10 in the morning) on a 4WD minibus we got to our campsite in the bush and headed to Kata Tjuta (The Olgas). These were pretty impressive domed mountains and we had a bit of a hike into some of the inner gorges. It was scary to think that these were the eroded remnants of mountains that are believed to have once been as big as the Himalayas. We then travelled towards Uluru to take in the sunset. We did see the mighty rock change colour as the sun was setting from a deep red to a slightly purple tinge, but then a dirty great big cloud came across, so we missed the final drama of dusk. Never mind, as by the time we got back to camp the stars were out and the full moon was stupidly luminous. Our group had a bit of a fire going and we enjoyed some porterhouse steaks & snags on the barbie. There was one final surprise that evening but I’ll leave it to Tash to reveal all.

Next morning was up at 5 so we could get back to Uluru for sunrise; this was pretty cool with the rock going a pastel orange colour. The morning was spent exploring the base of the rock – there were a couple of tranquil watering holes (the only 2 at Uluru and both still used by the local tribe, the Anangu), some cool Aboriginal cave paintings and breathtaking angles of the rock itself. We didn’t climb up it as this is V disrespectful – a bit like visiting a cathedral and walking the crap from your shoes across the alter – but by mid morning we’d hiked over 7 miles. It had rained on Uluru about a fortnight ago and apparently some guy had complained about the lack of good weather, despite seeing something that even some of the guides have never seen! So we hopped off back to camp for some lunch then drove through the bush to get to our next camp. We did make a stop for the collection of firewood and I now have a genuine bush injury – ok, so it’s only a 1 inch cut on my leg but I’m counting it. There was also this really cool little lizard, but one of the French blokes in our group picked it up, and in an act of self defence the lizard dropped its tail, which carried on twitching for several minutes. We had more good nosh at our camp - coconut chicken curry and cheesy damper bread all cooked on the fire.

We were up stupidly early again so we could get to Kings Canyon to take in the sunrise and clement morning temperatures. Some bonkers hiking took us across the canyon top which was amazing, even more so as it was once the ocean floor, millions of years ago. Hidden in the ridges behind the main canyon mouth were some beautiful waterholes, one of which is referred to as the Garden of Eden, which was where we had a morning snack of apples & cake, but no fig leaf action. After this up & down hike of about 5 miles and lunch in the bush we were looking forward to a nice drive back to Alice. However our guide’s survey said aaah-eeerh! As time was good we went back off road and drove through the MacDonnell Ranges, something that was usually on a separate tour. There was this whopping great crater left by a prehistoric comet that hit the ancient super continent of Gondwana (which basically fragmented into South America, Africa, India, Australia & Antarctica) and we saw the salt lakes that Donald Campbell used for some of his land speed record attempts. We also came across a camel that refused to move out of the road until our tour guide floored it and basically chased the camel off the road.

So we bid farewell to our touring group including an Ozzie version of Aaron, a very mardy Dutch chunker, a typically crazy Dutch woman whose boyfriend was bemoaning the lack of proper football on Oz tv & was missing Match Of The Day and a French dude who looked scarily like Rob – similar hair style & colour, same concerned expression, but slightly effeminate. Although I’ve never actually heard Rob speak French so this geezer could have been even more spooky. We did try to post some photos on our return to Alice but the internet access there had a very low bandwidth – we’ll try to get some up soon.

Next stop is the Queensland coast for some reef and rainforest action.