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Published: February 17th 2007
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Well, what an interesting couple of weeks it's been. I booked myself on a tour called 'Red Rocket'. The first part of this tour was a 2 day, 1 night excursion to Kakadu National Park, to my amazement this park is the size of Wales! It was huge. We had a tour guide called Yvonne who certainly knew her stuff, everything from the wildlife, flora and fauna and the aboriginal history, so it was all very interesting. There are a huge number of crocs in this area, freshwater crocs are relatively harmless, and won't attack unless provoked or threatened. Saltwater crocs are the larger ones which can reach 9 metres in length and will definitley eat you given half the chance. Part of the tour was a trip down one of the many rivers on a 'Crocodile Jumping' tour. There we were looking out of the OPEN window trying to spot crocs, whilst a member of the boat staff dangled a huge piece of meat on the end of a string of rope trying to attract the saltwater crocs. And it certainly attracted them, we saw a huge ugly one which I'm sure was eyeballing us throught the window and would've
got us given half the chance, but the meat had to make do, and they literally propel their tail and jump out of the water. I filmed some amazing footage of this on my camera, but you'll have to make do with photos for now. As much as it was exciting to watch, I somehow felt that attracting these dangerous animals to a boat with food was not a particulaly sensible thing to be doing, surely this will just make the crocs associate boats and people with food, therefore possibly increasing attacks on humans. Amazingly, some people do swim in the rivers around here, it is beyond me after seeing the size of these animals and their teeth! We also saw some amazing Aboriginal drawings. We went to Litchfield National Park and swam in a beautiful waterfall. We spent the night in tents, and it was so humid, being the wet season it is almost unbearably hot, but also pours it down with rain, and at night there are the scariest storms possible. Infact, Kakadu has more lightening strikes than anywhere else on earth. Kakadu is made up of forests, rivers and floodplains, so considering it was rainy season, and
believe me it had been raining alot, we couldn't get to see alot of places which were on our itinerary.....oh well. The rain was putting a dampner on things and we were eager to get back to Darwin for our dry, airconditioned dorm rooms, and a nice scooner of beer.
The next morning I was up at 5am for the next leg of the tour which was from Darwin to Alice Springs, which is meant to take 3 days/2 nights. Our friendly guide Joe picked us up, and was very different to Yvonne, a lot younger and carefree. So after visting Katherine Gorge and taking a lovely boatride up the river to see some more Aboriginal artwork and swim in another beautiful waterfall we carried on to our campsite. Had dinner and a few beers, and then to bed. I was sharing my tent with a nice girl from Adelaide called Elyse. There was the most almighty storm I was so scared that the Cyclone, which was active but moving towards Cairns, had actually turned around and was coming at us, of course it wasn't, but I thought our tent was going to blow away, and the flashes of
lightening were amazing, especially as you could see everything out of the mosie net. On top of this the rain was so heavy and consistent that our tent leaked and we got a bit wet, oh well, used to that my now.
So, early the next morning we were off on the road again, we'd been doing a lot of sitting and sleeping (well trying to) already. We stopped at a place called Daly Waters, which is where Australia's first international airport was. They also had a great little pub with a nice pool, so we played some water volleyball and had a bbq. Now, it was here that our guide heard some news that there had been an accident on the Stuart highway, which is the only road which links the Northern Territory to South Australia, earlier that morning, but we carried on south thinking it would have been cleared up by the time we reached there. WRONG! We arrived at a place called Dunmarra to find out that the highway was still closed as a lorry carrying cyanide had crashed, meaning that it was totally blocked off by the police, chemical cleaners, cranes etc were coming in
and wouldn't be there until the next morning and there was no way we would be able to pass for the next 24 hours. We were stuck in the middle of nowhere, in the outback. Luckily this little motel/bar/petrol station just had enough room for the 16 of us, so we stayed there. I was so glad I had a nice group of people to be stranded with, we had a laugh, played cards (so much that I dreamt about playing cards), drove an hour back to Daly Waters to use their swimming pool again, and sat in the bar and got drunk free as the owner seemed to enjoy giving away free shots, and letting people hold his snake. He also had the most adorable puppy called Rain, who I don't think had ever seen so many people at once, and got so much attention he went mad. So we stayed there for 2 nights with continuous, but vague news of cars actually being let through the highway, and also of it being closed for another 12 hours atleast. our guide had no customer services skills, didn't keep us very well informed and we felt that he was treating
this as a bit of a holiday. So one morning we woke him up early, had a bit of an arguement with him, but finally managed to talk him into driving us to the blockade. Thankfully he did, and we managed to get through at 10.30pm that night. Camped at another campsite nearby, only to find out in the morning that they'd closed the highway again as the chemical levels were too high. So onwards we went and saw the Devils Marbles and the Tropic of Capricorn. And finally..............Alice Springs. We were so glad to get there we all cheered as we drove in. We had a great night drinking and dancing.
Only......we had to be up at 5.15am for pickup to Ayers Rock, or Uluru as it is correctly known. So, with sore heads we were packed back onto a smaller bus than before. I was sat next to Russ who I renamed my younger brother, as he's the same age as Luke, and I was his older sister as I am the same age as his sister. But we had a great laugh. The journey to our campsite near Uluru was a good 5 hours drive with
Can you see all the bats
This place was so noisy, and most people got covered in poo....not me though! lots of small stops inbetween. I don't know how our guide Ben managed to drive such long distances on such boring long roads, without falling asleep. Anyway, the rest of us were trying to sleep on the bus with little success. So, we arrived at our campsite where there is a lookout where you can see a lovely sunset over Uluru and also over the Olga's. So we sat drinking beer watching the sunset. Ben had meanwhile cooked us a lovely bbq. And that night we slept in swags. Swags are big, canvas, zip up sleepingbags, with a sort of matress in them too. So we slept out under the stars in the swags, watching shooting stars, and I think I had the best nights sleep for ages. Only to be awoken by Ben at 4.14am getting us up in time to drive right up to Uluru to see the sunrise. Standing at the base of Uluru in the dark and seeing the red gradually appearing on the rock is pretty amazing.
We did a walk around the base of Uluru straight after sunrise whilst it was still cool, and it took us about one and a half hours.
Man with fly hat!
Had to get this pic for you dad! Although they don't actually wear them, he only put it on so I could take a photo! We actually did it really quickly because the flies are a persistent annoyance here. They try and go in your ears, nose, mouth, everywhere, and it drives you totally nuts. We also did walks at Kings Canyon and the Olga's, all of which were spectacular.............minus the flies.
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