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Published: January 25th 2012
After New Year we headed to the Blue Mountains to stay with Lynne and Steve and their two beautiful dogs, Rosco and Archie. The Blue Mountain are about 2 hours inland by train from Sydney and are really very beautiful. We were really looked after by Lynne and Steve and didn't want to leave when our three days were up. We got to see the mountains in mist and fog, go to the cinema and also took a wonderful walk down through the canyon and back out again with Steve, where Matt and Steve were able to stand under a waterfall. Thank You so much again for having us.
Melbourne was next and by far (in kerry's opinion) the best place in Australia. We stayed with another of Matt's friends, Zack and his girlfriend Sarah who were loads of fun. Although it was cold, Melbourne's an awesome place. Loads of funky buildings and wierd art projects all over the city. We took a free tour around the city on a bus, visited the docklands and the library where we seen Ned Kelly's Armer.
After three nights in Melbourne, Matt celebrated his 22nd birthday with a 9 hour train ride
to Adelaide and beans on toast for dinner, one to remember! We stayed three nights with a couch surfer, Sam, who was really very sweet. We had fun completing two different jigsaws with Sam, had a great Spag Bol and visited the South Australia Museum.
We had two train trips left as we headed to the red centre on THE GHAN to Alice Springs. We jumped off the air coned train into 37oC heat, bloody hot! We spent a couple of nights catching up on sleep as we had two English ladies sat behind us on the train, who both snored like thunder storms. We were picked up at 6am for our 2night, 3 day trip to Uluru. Our guide and Driver Linc, was awesome and had visited Newcastle and decided to support the football team just last summer, wierd as for once we were the only English people on our bus of 24 people made up of mainly Germans and Koreans.
From 6am we drove for 4 hours to Kings Canyon (Via a camel farm) where we had lunch and a little dip in the pool at the campsite. We them completed a 6km hike up, around
the rim of the canyon and then back down again. We got to see some wonderful things on the walk around the rim and through the garden of Eden and also some beautiful views but it was really hard work in the sun, it made the shade feel like the best thing in the world. We headed back to the campsite for Dinner and where we were spending the night close to Kings Canyon in our swags (large sleeping bags with a thin matress inside) we were able to stare up at the millions of stars that we could see but didn't get much sleep as the bugs were always flying around your head which wasn't covered!
Up at 6am again the next day and Matt counted the bites over Kerry's back and arms, 40+! Not nice! We drove another 3 hours past a massive rock we all thought was Uluru but turned out that it's smaller and nicknamed fooluru as people drive to it, take loads of photos and then leave thinking they'd been to Uluru. We drove to another campsite, had a swim in the pool and had lunch again before heading to the ROCK :-)
. Uluru is unbelievably beautiful and you are still aloud to climb it just not in the summer months as people die from the heat! The base walk around the rock is 10km and when we arrived were advised not to complete the walk as it was too hot (42oC). So we walked a quarter of the way around, which still took the best part of an hour to complete, so tiring. We watched the sunset behind us as we watched Uluru in different shades with our can of cheap beer and weren't jealous of the people from other tour companies as they watched with their glass of champagne and little chair to sit on!
Up at 4am the next morning to watch the sun rise behind Uluru (Amazing) and then headed to Kata Tjuta which is another rock formation 50km from Uluru. Kata Tjuta meaning 'Heads Many' is still used by Aboriginal people today for sacred ceremonies. We walked through the 'Valley of the Winds', another 6km walk through beautiful red rocks to an amazin view of the valley below us. Then slept the 6 hours home in the baking sun!
After another few days in Alice
Spings we headed north on The Ghan, a much better train journey then the first as we headed into a 50% chance of a Cyclone over the next few days in Darwin! We're staying with a couch surfer here, Frank the fireman, who has an amazing house, lets hope we get to meet him before we leave to fly into Indonesia!
Sending Love
Matt and Kerry
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Mammy
non-member comment
Great photos
Hey - lovely photos and commentary! Certainly a special birthday dinner Matthew!!! Haha. Love the baby kangaroos and the sunsets/rises. Love n miss you. Take care. Xxxxxxxxxx