Kirbys in the Desert!

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We arrived from Sydney to a red desert place in the centre of Australia. The sky was clear blue, there was hot sun and a cold winter wind.

The outback Pioneer Hostel was where we stayed in a ‘four dorm’ - It was a bizarre resort a 1000miles (literally!) from anywhere!

The first day we went to Uluru (or Ayers rock as the white immigrants have named it) and walked though the red desert with no one round to the base of this enormous rock.
It was fascinating, tall, bright, and very out of place on such flat land. Apparently it was once buried sand that turned to rock and then the ground around it has been worn away over time to reveal it. We walked round it looking at various sacred areas and enjoyed a wonderful sunset. He aboriginal people ask everyone not to climb it since it is a holy place to them, although it seems that many tourists still do.

That evening we had a great BBQ!! There were about 20 large BBQ’s and we bought the meat and salad from them and cooked it all up ourselves- it was really good fun! We ate kangaroo, crocodile, lamb, snags(!), and masses of salad! Ummm.

The next day we went round the Olgas, similar to Uluru but 8 domes of rock with a spectacular gorge. Mum and Eleanor spent a few minutes kangaroo spotting but saw nothing! I’m not sure there really are kangaroos here!

In the evening we had a brilliant ‘Sounds of silence’ dinner where we went out into the middle of the nowhere and had a drink and watched the sun go down then ate lots and listened to the didgeridoo. He best part of the evening was an astronomer telling us about the southern sky then looked through telescopes at the moon, milky way (which was brilliant!) alpha century, (our nearest star) and Jupiter and it’s four moons.

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Photos

Uluru
A giant red rock standing in the middle of 'nowhere'! A fancinating geological feature to us and scared rock to the Aborigines

walking through the desert scrub!
wearing jumpers and sunglasses! there were very few animals around since it's winter but there was lots of interesting plants. For example trees that spread their seeds by fire!