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Published: November 30th 2010
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Alice was the wife of the former Postmaster General of South Australia Sir Charles Todd !
We landed in Alice Springs and checked into our digs for the night at the Aurora Alice Springs Resort. Nothing much to do in Alice, so it was an early night as we were picked up at 5.05am for our next adventure, a journey through the Red Centre to Adelaide. Although the Red Centre is more like the Green Centre due to all the recent rain the outback hasn’t been so lush for around 50 years.
Wednesday 24th November: Set off on our outback adventure with a bus full of backpackers 20 of us and our Oz driver guide Jason...no worries! We arrived at Camp Yarula 13 hours later having travelled 500 miles (just like The Proclaimers). Along the way we stopped at Kings Canyon in 40 degree heat. Lunch at Kings Canyon was of course a BBQ with everyone doing their bit as a group and working together to cook the food and wash up with cold water from the outdoor sinks !
We had an extra visitor, a brown snake in the kitchen (only the third most deadly snake ),
luckily, we know how to deal with snake bites (see previous blog !). The snake was soon seen off – it was probably more scared of the girls screaming !
We watched the sunset over Uluru / Ayers Rock and then settled down for the night – Camp Yurula is pretty basic, to say the least through we were glad to get into our bunks in the tent (once the creepy crawlies had been swept out) and we wrapped up in our “swags” (Aussie bedrolls).It was a scary night with all sorts of sounds coming from outside the tent...not for the feint hearted.
Thursday 25th November: Up at 3.50am (!!!) and ready and on the bus at 4.50am to drive the short distance to watch the sunrise over Uluru, which really was a magical experience. This was followed by the 10km base walk of Ulura, we were done by 9am and then off to The Olgas (another big lump of rock sticking up out of the desert) and back to camp for lunch. We then had some free time to chill out before heading out again to the Uluru Aboriginal Cultural Centre and took in a little more
about the rock and it’s history.
Our tour guide Jason explained the cultural and spiritual significance of the rock.
There are difference sections for Aboriginal men and women and the elders and the aborigines stories are passed down from generations and told in the Rock Art. The history is quite fascinating, there were a number of different tribes across Australia, up to 350 tribes populated the country, all interacting and living in harmony, at one with the country. White man arrived and upset the harmony of their systems by interfering with their laws, hunter-gatherer methods and imposing Western ideas on them. This led to the break-up of the communities and destruction of the aboriginal way of life. Only recently has this been recognised and the Australian government is making amends however there is still a lot of work to be done. The aborigines have ‘lost’ their sense of belonging and identification with their cultural values, laws, families, their land and their spiritual values. These all interact to give them a sense of well-being and when Europeans arrived in Australia this interaction was broken by the imposition of Western law and the taking of their land for cattle stations
which have been used by Aboriginies for their livelihood for many thousands of years. It certainly gave us a better understanding of how aborigines have been affected.
We watched sunset over Uluru with a plastic cup of champagne ! Uluru is a magical place and we will never forget it. The colours and shade on the rock are amazing.
Back to camp for another BBQ (when do they ever stop) and an early night.....
Friday 26th November ....on the road again at 5am to travel the 500 miles (the Proclaimers again) to our next destination Coober Pedy.
We passed Mount Connor(tourists often mistake this for Ularu so the tour guides call it Foolaru) and made our way along the Stuart Highway and into South Australia, crossing a time zone from the Northern Territories to South Australia of one hour ! We also passed the ‘Dog Fence’ the biggest man made object in the world, 3,000 kilometres to keep the dingoes out ! It is larger than the Great Wall of China.
We arrived in Coober Pedy, the Opal Capital of the world and the location of some iconic films such as Mad Max – it is
definitely a world apart ! We toured the opal mines and the unusual town.The houses are all built underground. We checked out the sleeping arrangements for the group and the underground dorms put us in mind of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest so we legged it across the road and checked into the four star hotel. The worlds only underground hotel – luxurious in comparison ! We had tea at the local pizza parlour and retired to the bar which was very Royston Vasey!
Saturday 27th November – lie-in today ! Out at 8.30am and on our way – stopped on the highway where it doubles as a runway for the Flying Doctors service and checked out the road trains,they have some massive trucks on the road and when you pass them its scary !
Stopped at Glendambo (population 30!) and went on to Lake Hart salt lake where things are not always as they seem ! The Ghan Train track runs alongside the lake. We saw more burnt out cars on this trip than we saw kangaroo’s ! Went on to Woomera, another town that time forget. Woomera was cut off from the outside world as
it was used for missile testing in the 50’s and 60’s – BAE systems now run the town, we drove around the town on a Saturday afternoon, had lunch in the park where there is also a beautiful pool and we didn’t see one resident ! There is an exhibition of the missiles that were tested and launched there. (Simon, I think this was the place you were going to be seconded to by BAE, good job you missed out this place is hundreds of miles from anywhere !).
Back on the road where we saw wild emu’s. We got to the end of the Stuart Highway and some of the tour members had completed from one end to the other from Darwin so we pulled up at the side of the road and had an impromptu sing along to celebrate ! Only another 300km to Adelaide....arrived at our digs in the Flinders Ranges for the next two nights in Quorn (named after Quorn in Leicester).
Sunday 28th November - up and out for 9am – saw our first kangaroo ! Went to an aboriginal cave painting site at Yourambulla, went to Wilpena Pound, a geological oddity as
it is a effectively a huge crater but is a geological formation caused by the thrusting up of the earth’s crust.
The whole group fit into a gum tree – another symbol of Australia and we walked 6km to see The Flinders Range from the look-out and stopped at the Cazneauz Tree, the majestic gum trees are the secret shape and shade of the Australian Bush and symbolise the “spirit of Australia” –the poem by Albert Cazneauz, the strapline now used by Qantas.
This trip gets weirder and weirder as we then went on a camel ride on the Pichi Richi camel train !
This was a camel ride run by a crazy man from the outback who was smoking splifs as he led us round in the camel train.
Monday 29th November – the last day of the trip, we went to Warren Gorge to try to spot the shy and elusive Yellow Footed Rock Wallaby – we didn’t see any but we did see lots of kangaroo’s ! We then hiked 8km to the summit of Dutchman’s Stern for the stunning 360 views of Quorn, Spencer Gulf and the Flinders Ranges ! Our last stop
was the Clare Valley where we did a spot of wine tasting at the Knappstein Winery and purchased a few bottles before the travelling the last 100km into Adelaide.
Said Goodbye to the group and a tearful hello to Vicky’s family, Auntie Susan and Uncle David, our hosts for the next seven nights.
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