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Published: March 16th 2007
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Uluru
The big rock at sunset We basically covered 4,000 km of the Outback from Adelaide on the South coast to Townsville on the North East coast in 5 days. As predicted it was extremely hot, uncomfortably hot and even though we had allowed 10 days for the journey we squashed this into half the time.
The first main “town” was Coober Pedy - an Opal mining town, where the extremes in weather are so great, that many people and businesses are underground. On arriving there the first thing we did was to purchase fly nets for our heads, as the flies were unbearable. They don’t just want to land on your food, they love getting into your eyes, up your nostrils and into your ears, and so even though you look really stupid, it was definitely worth it. Coober Pedy has been compared to Mars for having similar landscapes - it has been used as the location for numerous sci-fi films and it does look like a film set itself, everything looks temporary as if it is all made of cardboard. If it wasn’t for the prospect of possibly getting rich everyday, I can’t see why people live there - even then, I
Where does the road go?
The heat made it difficult to see what was coming! don’t think it’s worth it!
I was eventually allowed behind the wheel of Wendy, once Sam had deemed that we were far enough away from people and other cars! The only thing that you have to worry about hitting are the animals, in particular cows, as they have a lot of unfenced land, so there are many “wandering stock” signs - we did see a couple of eagles feasting on some unlucky ones. The landscape is incredibly flat and the soil burns different shades of oranges and reds, so even though there isn’t a huge amount to look at, there’s a lot to take in.
We arrived at Uluru (Ayers rock) in time for sunset, it wasn’t as great as we had hoped as there was too much cloud around, but the rock definitely turned different colours. We had already decided not to do the climb to the top as the Anangu people, (the aboriginal community that live here) ask you not to, but on hearing that the climb walk was closed on the day we arrived, as the temperature was 36 degrees at 8 am in the morning helped! The Anangu, are the traditional owners
Kata Tjuta
Part of the Olgas who had the land returned to them in 1985 - we also didn’t realise that 35 people have died trying to climb up it.
Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) is the other attraction in the national park - it means “many heads” as the giant boulders are rounded on top. When the sun was shining on them you could see streaks of colour as if someone had thrown pots of paint onto them.
We did another photo session at Uluru at sunrise and then headed of to Alice Springs. We stopped at the West MacDonnell Ranges on the way to see “Standley Chasm” which is gap that cuts right through the mountain. Sam wasn’t too happy at having to pay to see Standley’s Chasm and kept offering that he had one I could view for free, but I declined! It was good to see, but at that point the heat and the flies were getting to us…this was evident on another day when I had a tomato sauce sandwich but managed to convince Sam and myself that it had bacon in it too…at the time it was great, but we were worried about the effects of sun
Looking good!
What else can I say! stroke shortly afterwards! We had a night in Alice Springs before we continued North stopping to see the “Devil’s Marbles” which are huge granite boulders scattered alongside a particular part of the road, they are the remains of molten lava eroded over millions of years.
We finally crossed the border into Queensland “the sunshine state” to be greeted by a massive thunderstorm - we had a pit stop for the night in a tiny place called Camooweal. The campsite was by far the worst we have stayed at which was cemented by the fact that there were frogs in the toilets! The one in the ladies was boldly sitting on the toilet seat, daring anyone to go for a wee, while the one in the gents was hiding under the rim and only came out when Sam nearly flushed him away! We had a few drinks in the local pub, where it seemed the locals were speaking a different language, apart from ordering a drink we couldn’t decipher another word that they were saying. Outback Queensland definitely has the worst road so far - to call it a “highway” is stretching the truth somewhat, it would only be
Standley Chasm
Better than what else was on offer! an A-road back home and even they are in better condition! On a couple of occasions we were airborne and then the road had all but disappeared in places as it was covered in sand. Not far over the border we started to see creeks and rivers with water in and long grasses and trees so that made a welcome change. The towns here are proper working towns, places where a “man is not a man unless he has leatherwear and saddlery”, as was advertised on one of the shops that we passed!
We’re glad that we have seen the sites of the “red centre” as it is such a huge part of Australia and it was interesting to learn about Aboriginal culture as this is something that is largely sidelined everywhere else however, we wouldn’t want to drive back the same way and are looking forward to some rain and cooler weather!
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