Sauerkraut.

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The first night in Alice Springs gave us the chance to witness a heroic attempt by a pissed English bloke (who knew little German) at the hostel bar to chat up a hot and sober German girl (who knew little English).

Despite the odds stacked against him, he persevered by reciting every German word he knew, beginning with guten tag, followed by autobahn and sauerkraut, and becoming increasingly one-sided from there on in. I’m pretty sure blitzkrieg and panzer were mentioned at one point.

She left a few minutes later with the immortal words - “I have to go over there now“. He still managed to get in an auf wiedersen as she went though.

As with most people who visit Alice Springs, we only did it as a starting place for our Ayers Rock / Uluru tour. Downtrodden and a bit menacing after dark would be a fair description.

We were booked on a 3-day, 2-night trip, the cheapest and easiest way to see all the sights, advertised as including the 'authentic experience' of sleeping rough in a swag bag.

The gentleman in the bar turned out to be Mikey, a chirpy and likeable postman from Kent. (Imagine the facial expressions of Wallace from Wallace and Gromit, with the mannerisms of a young Norman Wisdom and you’re getting close.)

He was the one who kept the bus waiting the next morning at 5am, as he stumbled on reeking of booze.

Amongst others, our group also included:

1) A girl from Belfast who as far as I could tell stopped talking once on the second day when she brushed her teeth.

2) A couple of Italian guys who wore sunglasses constantly the whole 3 days.

3) A man from Singapore who wasn’t quite sure what he’d signed up for, had nothing except a leather jacket and a carrier bag, and who appeared to nearly die on at least 3 separate occasions.

Our leader was Skip, a tetchy no-nonsense ex-Navy man who knew a lot about Aboriginal culture and history and took a great deal of pleasure in waking us up at 5am.

The highlights were textbook: a cracking sunset and and a freezing cold sunrise at Uluru, sheer rock faces at Kings' Canyon, a stroll around the strange boulders at Kata Tjuta, some enthusiastic lessons about Aboriginal life from Skip, and falling asleep looking up at the milky way.

Aside from the didgeridoo incident, and the hundreds of kilometres of driving, there was only one other low point of note: Me jumping into an 80m-deep creek that was a lot colder than I expected, causing my chest to tighten like it was in a vice and making breathing impossible.

Only the fear of having to be pulled out, shivering in a pair of M&S pants, saved me as I scrabbled back to the side.

Luckily Paula got a picture.

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Photos

And this is him and the digeridoo burning in the fire.
Only joking.

Skip giving us one of his lessons.
Fact - there are a few places around Ulurru that Aboriginal men aren't allowed to see, and can't be photographed in case they do.

Xan in a creek.
Unable to breathe and currently thinking he may have to be rescued whilst wearing nothing but emergency marks and spencers pants.

Mmm comfortable.
Are we nearly there yet? Nearly - only another five hundred kilometres. Want another Werthers Original? No thanks, I've already had thirty-seven.

Did we climb Ulurru?
Nope.
We weren’t going to anyway, but Skip gave us a convincing 5 reasons why he never would:
Erosion of the rock from walking boots
Pollution thanks to people peeing on it
It’s a hard climb up a sheer rock face
There’s a danger of death - and the traditional owners of the rock feel responsible
The right to climb cheated form the Aboriginal owners
Ultimately it’s 40,000 years of history vs. the trophyism of being able to say you’ve been up it.
Plus it was closed due to high winds at the top.