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Published: October 28th 2008
Ayres Rock
As seen from the road as we drove towards it...As I write this Nick is just starting his 3 hour shift of driving, to the left is absolutly nothing but sandy dessert/bush and the odd tree, and to the right is exactly the same, behind and in front is nothing but long long straight road. Its currently 9am and the temperature is already 88 degrees, I've already driven 400km today putting in 3 hours starting at 6am. The last 5 days have been long, hard, and very rewarding, its not long since our last blog but this is deserving of its own. It all started 5 days ago....
We woke up in Airlie Beach in our posh 2 bed apartment we had been renting, had a quick clean up and headed to the car rental offices. By 10am we had a nice Toyota Carolla automatic, in dark blue, not the best of colours for our hot journey, but at least it will cover up the red sandy dirt well. The nice lady who gave us the car explained that we can give it back in Cairns and that we have unlimited kilometers for the next 7 days. She presumed we were just driving to Cairns had no idea we
Uh Oh...
As quick with the camera as we are on the roads! intend to make full use of them. By 10am we had picked up our bags from the apartment and were heading out of Airlie Beach up the coast towards Townsville. We cruised along the nice open roads and the car handled really well, perhaps a little too well. We had got no further than 10 minutes on our monster journey and it happened. The cunningly disguised red police car quickly spun around, flicked on the flashing lights and siren and was chasing after us. We had drove 6km up the east coast and hardly seen one police car until now. The chase didn't last long, infact we just pulled over instantly and waited for him to come over. He was actually quite a nice chap and informed us that we had been doing 131km/ph in a 100. If we had been going 9km/ph faster apparently Adam would have been banned from driving in Australia. I think we wouold both have prefered this over the $350 fine that we recieved. We drove off and had a good chuckle about our bad luck, after this incident we didn't see a single police car for 3 days. We reached Townsville after a few
Entering Northern Territory
Another Aussie state ticked off, the background on this picture gives a good idea of what its like! hours and turned left heading away from the ocean we had lived by fpor the last 3 months, and heading towards the centre of Australia. The landscape changed the further we drove, the forests dissapeared and the ground became a lighter sandy colour with more small bushes and a few trees. It wasn't long before we started to see a lot of kangaroos around near the road (both living and dead), as we headed along we saw a bunch of 4 Emus, something not seen very often in the wild in these parts, we were goign to fast to catch a photo unfortunatly! We kept driving until the sun had gone down and it started to get dark, we parked the car in a small town (population 300) called Julia Creek and attempted to sleep in it, this was not going to be an easy trip. 920km complete.
The next day we were woke up by the hot sun at 6am, put on a sun hat and started driving. The roads were becoming longer and straigher, and the amount of dead kangaroos was increasing rapidly. We also started to see lots of dead cows by the side of the
Long and dangerous road
This cow didn't make it... road, we don't know if these died from the heat or from cars, I would not want to hit a kangaroo never mind a cow! We saw a bit more wildlife again this day, we saw a wild car run across the road and into the bush, and we saw lots of massive eagals (eating dead kangaroos). The heat was increasing and reached 97 degrees. We were heading towards Alice Springs today, which is the main city in the centre of Australia and the main place people stay when visiting Ayres Rock (which is 500km from Alice). The roads along here become hot and dangeroua, we started to see abandonded cars and camper vans in the bush land by the roads, clearly a lot of people have problems driving this part of the country, we certainly wouldn't have tried it in our camper van we had a few months back. Sometimes we din't see another car on the road for about an hour, and we drove hours without seeing a building or person. At one point heading towards Alice Springs there is no petrol station for 350km, if you miss the petrol station before that you are in big trouble.
Devils Marbles
and the only other visitors besdies us! We decided we should be smart and buy a jerry can for the car, not that smart however as for some reason we brought a 5 litre one, this would only get us 50km or so, as we would soon find out. We were 300km from Alice Springs and our petrol range on the car said we had 370km of fuel. We passed the last garage with plenty of petrol to spare. Alice was then 200km and we had 220km of fuel left. Alice is then 100km and we have 80km of fuel left. oh dear. We pulled over and smuggly filled our tank from the jerry can, taking pictures and joking about as we did it. We got back in the car and it had made very little difference. Alice springs is 20km and we have 15km. We 'rolled' into the first garage at Alice Springs just as it turned dark with 1km showing on the fuel computer. Phew. We found a Burger King and decided to eat and find somewhere to park and sleep. I'm sure Alice Spings is a nice place but our first impressions weren't good, there was a lot of native aboriginals, which we have
Adam at Devils Marbles!
This is only a few of the hundred or so marbles! no problem with. But they just look so god damn scary. It didn't help that the main news story in the petrol station was about a body being found 100km out of Alice by the highway only 2 days ago. So we headed out of Alice in the dark heading south and closer to Ayres Rock, we started to see lots of kangaroos very close to the road and quickly got an understanding for how dangerous driving at night here really is. We saw about 20 in an hour, all very close to the road, we drove slow and avoided all of them! We found a roadhouse (like a service station but ran by some potential outback serial killer) and parked in the car park for another uncomfortable sleep. 15 hours of driving and we covered 1610km today. 2530m completed.
Woken by the sun again and on the road by 6am. We saw lots of kangaroos and then saw some wild horses running around the bush. Then we saw 2 wild camels, something that we later found out are very at while reading at the cultural centre. We were heading to Ayres but our first stop was Devil's Marbles,
we had previously heard of this place but didn't know what it was and didn't know we were going anywhere near it, it was 2km from the highway so we took a detour. Devil's Marbles is a small area with lots and lots of very round big boulders, some balencing on top of others, most of them are bigger than a person and we had a good climb about and took some photos before heading back on the road. Next stop was Kings Canyon, a massive canyon cutting into the red rock surface, it was about 200km detour but well worth it. We laughed from inside the car at the tourists wearing fly masks, that was before we had got out the car. It was like being in an oxfam advert, they were everywhere and all over your face, trying to get in your mouth and eyes. I would have guessed it was because we had been living in a car for almost 3 days but it wasn't just us they were all over! We did the 3km walk to the base of the canyon and then got back on track towards Ayres Rock.The first moment we saw the Rock
Abandoned Campervan
Not everybody makes it! One of the many cars we saw 'dead' in the outback... was something I will always remember, it looked massive and stuck up out the ground on the horizon, As we got closer the shape of it changed and it became more and more red.We paid the park fees ($25) and drove even closer. You cann't imagine how big it is. The surface of it is very strange and similar to what I would imagine Mars to be like. We drove to the base of it and then did a 2km walk around some of the bottom of it, it was really pretty and we got to touch some of it. The walk up the rock was closed apparently due to high winds and high temperature, although we have heard its always closed now due to spirtual reasons or weather, so nobody can go up it. Seeing it was good enough for us and we drove a lap around it before checking out the cultural centre to learn a bit about it. We saw quite a big lizard in the bush here and got a photo. Next stop for us was The Olga's, which are more odd rock formations very close to Ayres rock. The main walk here was closed due
View from the drivers seat
Note the long empty road behind us! to the heat, it reached 104 degrees at the base of Ayres Rock! We did one of the smaller walks and drank about 1.5 litres of water in 20 minutes while doing it! After this we popped to Ayres Rock Resort to get some petrol before it closed and then drove back to Ayres Rock to watch the sun set. It was cloudy and people didn't seem to think it was going to be any good, but the sun broke through the clouds just as it was going down and the Rock looked really nice. The sky went a through different shades of colours and the rock was lit up as it started to go dark. We got some good photos and then started our drive back to Alice Springs, it was dark now and the kangaroo risk was very very high. Nick was driving and one was right in the middle of the road, we didn't manage to stop before we got to it but he moved just in time and almost touched our bumper! We got to Alice and picked up fuel and pies from a 24 hour BP. It was a saturday night and cars were racing
Other side of the Rock
Taken on our drive around it! around, people were drunk everywhere and it didn't seem like a good place to sleep in the car, so we slowly and carefully carried on our drive. We were heading north and made some good progress, we wanted to meet Will in Cairns on the Monday and it looked like we might make it. At 3am we got tired and decided to get some sleep, we were 100km from anything in all directions, which seemed pretty safe to us, so we pulled into an empty rest stop and tried to get some sleep. The view of the stars was amazing. We have seen great night skys from small islands and remote areas in SE Asia but nothing came close this. We got 3 hours sleep before the sun came up. 3820km complete.
Awoke by the sun again, nothing but dessert and bush around us, started driving at 7am. We passed lots of 'road trains' today, these things are hugh. They are basically your standard Eddie Stobart HGV with another 2 attached to the back, at one point we saw one carrying 4 loads! They are only used in the remote central parts of Australia and make for some good
Climb closed....
Apparently it always is now, very tempting to just go for it - but we didn't! overtaking challenges! We passed through lots of small towns including Wycliffe Wells which is Australias UFO capital apparently. We didn't see any UFOs but the small town seemed keen to boast about all the apparent sightings, we stopped here for petrol and the attendant had an alien on her T-shirt. We were aiming for Mount Isa today, we started driving north and by midday had turned right heading back towards the east coast. We arrived at Mount Isa in good time before it got dark and decided we should check into a hostel for the night. The hostel brought back memories of Cambodia and wasn't in the best conditions but we were just happy to have a bed for the night, and to have a wash. After 4 days of living in the car we were both in need of a wash and lay down. We went out for some proper food while we were there too. Its hard knowing what to take for food on long trips like this, we had no fridge and no cooking impliments, plus at times there wasn't going to be anywhere to buy food. We had been eating cold beans from the can for
Base of the rock
Looks like something out of The Flintstones! the last few days once we ran out of sandwhich materials and our bread had gone stale! We both crashed out asleep in the hostel around 10pm. 4978km complete.
We woke up at 5am in the hostel and checked out at 6am, back driving by 6.02am. We were on the home straight no and figured we could make Cairns by the evening. Adam did the first 3 hours while Nick slept and then we swapped roles. We picked up pies to eat whenever we filled up on fuel and stuck to our 3 hour shifts. We had seen everything we set out to on our trip now, kanagoos, cow skulls, Ayres Rock and the real outback, but one thing was missing. We hadn't seen any tumble weeds blow across the road, something we were very disapointed about. Then it happened, Adam was driving and 2 of them blew across in front of us, now we had seen everything. Actually over the next hour or so we saw quite a few tumble weeds but didn't manage to get any good photos. We stopped to eat our pies by the side of the road over looking the White Mountains and reflected
Ayres Rock and some clouds!
One of the best photos we got of it on our road trip, it had been some great times and we felt like we had acheived something, not everyone can say they drove to the centre of Australia and back, and in only 5 days. We reached Townsville by 3pm and were back to the coast, heading north now up the Bruce Highway towards Carins. We cruised through the Misty Mountains, passed Mission Beach and Dunk island and arrived in Cairns just as it got dark. We parked the car in the first car parking space we saw and just sat there. It was complete, we had made it, we checked the speedo and then went to find Will. He was staying at Gilligans hostel, we checked in and found out he was in a 4 bed dorm by himself, so we got the same room as him and suprised him as we walked in. We looked worn out, hadn't shaved for a week and still felt like we were moving along a road. We hadn't seen Will for a month and had a great catch up, its amazing how much can happen in a month. The catching up moved to the bar downstairs and somehow our 'quiet drink'
Ayres Rock before sunset
The red gets a lot brighter as the low sun shines on it ended about 2am in the morning when we somehow drunkenly got back from whichever night club we found our way too. 6082km complete.
We now have 5 days in Cairns and 5 days left in Australia! Its been a great 5 months and we have loved every bit of it. Plans for the next week are to claim our tax back, do some shopping and then skydive on our last day in Australia. Joe arrives from Lindeman on Wednesday and then the 4 of us head of to New Zealand for the next sector of our trip on the 1st of november.
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Adam Gibson and Nick Burke
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Janet Gibson
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Good Read
Another entertaining read, but the spelling was slipping must have been the travelling! You have to rub it in don't you, its about 1 degree here when I was driving home and snowing like mad! Enjoy the sky dive, look forward to the pics of it. Miss you