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Published: July 31st 2011
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It was 5am when we had to get up for the flight the Ayers Rock, not a time anybody can say they enjoy being up at! The lack of sleep was clearly getting to Sophie as 5 minutes after we took off from Cairns airport she looked down and asked Mum whether the land we were over was still in Australia, bless her. When we arrived at Ayers Rock airport 3 hours later the first thing everybody noticed was the smell! Stepping off the plane was a huge shock as the air smells so different to anywhere we’ve ever been before, it was weird! After a drive to check out our resort, we went straight to look around the Olga Mountains for a while. They were pretty good, but nobody could really be bothered with the 4 hour walk around them!
Later in the day we had the Sounds of Silence. It sounded incredible and everyone was extremely excited about it! We got the bus around 5pm which picked up a load of people in different hotels to take them all there. Me Sophie and George did get very excited when we saw a boy outside the bus wearing
a Derby shirt! After a few minutes of frantically smacking on the window to try and get his attention we gave up after we were getting dodgy looks from the others in the bus, mardy people! The Sounds of Silence was breathtaking . We started off with glasses of Champagne whilst the sun set over the Australian Outback and met a lovely couple from England living in Brisbane. We then moved on to have our dinner on tables set on the bright red Australian desert sand, with a choice of food including kangaroo, crocodile and lamb. A bloke came in with a ridiculously powerful torch and showed us around the night sky. Imagine the clearest sky you’ve ever seen, multiply the amount of stars by 1000 and make each one 10 times as bright. That probably doesn’t even come close to what the stars looked like in the sky. We all got to look into a telescope which showed us Saturn, and it literally looked identical to what you see on tv! The fact it was all you can eat and drink as well meant the majority of us were rather drunk and stuffed by the end of it and
were looking forward to our beds back at the cabin! Although it wasn’t too late for me and Sophie to pretend that there was a cockroach on the floor on the way back, prompting mum to move at the speed of light across the patio.
The next day was an early start as well, especially for poor old mum. The fact Ayers Rock is a half hour difference to England (+8.30 hours) confused her a little more than it should have. Our alarms were set for around 6 to get up and drive to Ayers Rock to see the sunrise, although mum accidentally woke up at 4, made the freezing cold walk to the shower (showers and toilets were in their own block separated from our cabin..), had a shower, walked back, attempted to wake us up and made herself a coffee before realising the time! We all laughed at her in the morning. Once everyone else had woken up at the correct time, we drove to a lookout a short distance from the Ayers Rock itself and watched the sunrise light up the world. The sky went a beautiful colour of red as the tip of the sun
rose above the horizon, so of course we made sure we got a good 30 pictures of it!
After a short drive around the rock, we began our 5 hour journey across the outback to Alice Springs. Anywhere in England and this trip would be hell, but I couldn’t imagine a better place in the world to spend 5 hours of my life sat in the backseat of a car looking out over some of the most amazing sights most people will never see. The landscape had a lot more greenery than we originally thought, which was quite a shock, as we expected it to be nothing but desert! Everyone was very excited when we first saw wild camels, but after another group of them a bit further down the road we thought we’d end up bored of them by the end of the day! We also saw two emu’s and even a wild dingo, proving mine and George’s theory that they don’t actually exist wrong, which we were more than happy about! Dad also attempted to take us down a long track off the main road to see Rainbow Valley. 15 minutes later as we were travelling along
a gravel track clearly designed for monster trucks we decided that dad won the award for silliest idea of the holiday and turned back.
We arrived at Alice Springs mid-afternoon and were soon informed that Price Charles, Princess Diana and Prince William had stayed in the very hotel that we were at! The first thing we noticed about Alice Springs was the rather large aboriginal community. Albeit it a little scary, this was fine with us, until the group outside our hotel decided the entire town of Alice Springs wanted to hear their ridiculous drunken ramblings. They wouldn’t shut up for the next 3 hours, but before we went insane we eventually went out for dinner. After a short walk around the town we ended up at a nice little Italian restaurant and came back home for an early night. The free wi-fi at the hotel meant I was up till the early hours of the morning anyway! Thank god we had a bit of a lie in the next morning as everyone was dead from the lack of sleep the previous nights. Before we left for the airport, we noticed that the cleaner was wearing a Derby shirt!
Only us would ask him to stop what he was doing and get a picture with him.. The only thing weirder than a cleaner in Alice Springs wearing a Derby shirt, is a cleaner in Alice Springs wearing a Derby shirt without a clue who Derby are! He’d been given the shirt a while ago from a mate, so we filled him in on the wonders of Derby and then left the new die hard Rams fan and headed for the airport. After a couple of days spent in the desolate Australian Outback, we were hoping that the civilisation of Melbourne would turn out to be a nice change, and so far I can safely say that it is more than living up to the expectation!
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