Holiday in Australia - Day 53

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Well it was an early start this morning, with the Wayoutback safari bus picking me up at the hostel at 06:45!!!! The safari group consisted of 14 people in total, 10 females and 4 blokes!!! This consisted of a number of nationalities, 5 English, 4 Swiss, 3 German, 1 French and 1 Irish. The group is all young people, I think I'm probably the oldest. The tour guide is called "Sauce", and it's fair to say he is a typical Aussie. We started off with a cup of tea at the Anzac Hill Memorial, gives a spectacular sunrise view over Alice!! After that it was a pretty grueling drive in the baking sun to the the Olgas. On the way we managed to catch a site of one of the coolest looking creatures, the Thorny Devil. Before we reached the Olgas, we headed to a camp for a lunch of sandwiches. The involved us all having to muck in and help with cooking, cleaning etc This was really good, as it helped you get to know the rest of the group.

We arrived at the Olgas, and the weather was baking. The temperature must have been in the 30s. Unfortunately, this means that the flies are even more annoying than usual!!! If you haven't experienced outback flies, all I can say is imagine a thousand little black buzzing things annoying the hell out of you. Thankfully I'd been advised to purchase a fly net, which means that the flies can land every where else apart from your face. This provides some relief, but I would have still given all my money to nuke the whole fly population!! Anyway, with plenty of water & the necessary walking equipment we embarked on a 2 hour hike around the Olgas. This was great, and I have to say the scenery was amazing. The trek became a little treacherous, when it decided to rain!!! The rain was heavy, and with the ground being baked solid by the sun the whole are turned into a flash flood. This made it a little tricky to navigate the hills, thankfully we had no casualties in our group.

In the evening we headed back to camp, where we had a glass of champagne as we attempted to watch the sunset over Uluru. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see the sun sink below the horizon due to clouds!!! After this we had a lovely bush meal cooked by Sauce & sat around the campfire drinking beers!!! Then it was off the bed in a swag, as it was an early start in the morning (4:10).

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Photos

Sunrise over Alice
The sunrise over Alice Springs, taken from the Anzac Memorial.

The Bus
The wayoutback safari bus.

Thorny Devil
An amazing Australian reptile, this creature is covered in thorns. Hence its name. Despite its appearance, it is totally harmless. They are found in central and western Australia throughout deserts and light bushland.
The Thorny Devil is on average about 20 cms long, and they feed on a wide variety of ants. They catch them by using their tongue much the same as an ant-eater would do.

The Olgas
The name has been aptly given to the Olgas as Kata Tjuta, which actually means 'many heads' in traditional Aboriginal language.

Group sunset photo
The wayoutback group at sunset on day 1.

Comments

[Sean]

Thorny Devil
Thanks for the natural history lesson - YOU FREAK!!! We want more dirt than that on the bloggs... wheres the body count? No stories of back-packers being brutally murdered on the trans-australian freeways? Shark attacks? Scorpion bites? Spider encounters? Jees... call yourself a traveller? (nice work mate, keep it up!!)