The Red Centre

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Darwin - Freemantle (Perth)

We flew back to Perth from Darwin and made our way to Freemantle, a smaller neighbour town five minutes away. We had visited Freemantle briefly during our last stay in Perth, doing a night tour of the prison which was great fun, so this time we wanted to spend a bit longer and see what the place had to offer. We also had the chance to catch up with Glen and Cheska, another British backpacker couple who we worked with at Monkey Mia who knew Freemantle well and recommended it as a good place to spend some time.
I was impressed with the amount of soul this place had, there are buskers at every turn, musician’s in every bar, coffee houses and walkway and for lovers of a decent pint (or schooner since pints are tough to come by over here) lot’s of micro breweries selling delicious beer. This is definitely where the cool cat’s hang out! We went to a comedy night at the Little Creature’s brewery (a large brewery in WA and famous for it‘s pale ale) and did an awful lot of walking about and taking in the sights of the buskers one of which we would see months later on ‘Australia’s Got Talent’, he was a punk rocker who played the bagpipes.

Freemantle - Alice Springs / Uluru

After one of the most unnerving landings I’ve experienced, that has consequently propelled my fear of flying to the next level, we arrived in Alice Springs. Alice Springs is town in the middle of Australia’s vast red centre, yet even though it is so isolated only a small majority of it’s population are said to be completely insane. We were in Alice Springs to make a visit to the one known as Ayres or the rock formerly known as Uluru. We booked onto a tour of the rock and it’s friends: “The Olgas” (previously called Kata Tuja) and King’s Canyon (previously known as… king‘s canyon?), incidentally the reason that Ayres rock and The Olga’s are no longer known by those name’s is because the Australian government like’s to show themselves as compassionate to the Aboriginal’s feeling’s and by recognising there intended names as given by the Indigenous people and not by a European’s who showed up long after life was established and decided to claim it as his and another European who decided to claim a whole load of sacred ground and name it after some Austrian duchess called Olga who probably never even knew Australia was on the map let alone the fact that there are whole mountainous area’s there named after her that previously belonged to the locals but hey. Our tour was two nights of “slumming it” in a swag under the stars and three days of gasping for water whist trying to get from A to B (‘B’ being several miles from ‘A’) during some of the most intense heat we’d experienced. This was self harm on a epic scale, bodies aching, clothing drenched with sweat and skin blistering from the sun and wear and tear on the feet. During the end of the Kings Canyon hike we were literally crawling under any shade regardless of how tight the space was and Michelle was crying with exhaustion and displaying classic signs of what I like to call ‘heat dementia’ wherein she would be shouting at me for no reason at all and walking very slowly or not at all even though she wanted to get to the end for a drink? I thought I may developing symptoms to when for the briefest second I consider licking Michelle’s face and drinking her tear’s. Happily that didn’t happen and after some rewarding treks and rainy nights under the stars we were done with our tour and made haste to the airport for the next stop, Sydney.

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