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Published: July 22nd 2009
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Our 3 weeks with Clive and Vanessa here has flown by but we managed to pack loads into the time! They left yesterday morning and homesickness hit us like a tonne of bricks. I think it was just that they were going “home” and will be just up the road from all the people we are missing so much, today we are feeling much better again!
So the guys arrived on the Wednesday, I had just finished nights that morning so managed to grab a couple of hours kip before driving out to the airport to pick them up. Alice airport is only a domestic one so when you collect people you can walk right through to the gate and see them get off the plane. I have to say we were bouncing around like a couple of school kids we were that excited!
We hit the ground running, not giving them time to give into jetlag. We figure the best way to avoid it is not to give in to sleep until bedtime, so after a look round town and the afternoon having a couple of beers in the pub (just to introduce them to
Us at Uluru
24 Hours after they landed in Alice! Oz beer you understand) we turned in for dinner and an early night.
The following morning we were up early and on our way to Uluru. For us this place never seems to lose it’s magic, but having Clive and Vanessa there for their first visit added to our enjoyment. The next evening we drove out to the Olgas for sunset. Before we have always been to the sunset point, but this time it seemed to have gotten very overgrown, the trees in front mean that you only get to see the top of the formations. This along with the 10 bus loads of tourists trekking up the path with their chairs and hampers sent us packing to find a better view. We drove off and managed to find ourselves a spot where we were the only people. The place really is breathtaking and being just us there the silence added to the feeling.
We found the road between Uluru and Alice littered with Camels which Clive and Vanessa were stunned at, they didn’t know that Central Australia had wild camels! We made slow progress towards Kings Canyon stoping every few km’s to take more photos!
We first visited the Desert Park in our first week in Alice, not really expecting much from it (Sand??!) we found ourselves blown away and joined up as NT residents meaning we can visit now for free. C&V were equally impressed with the place, and being 10 mins up the road we managed to while away several afternoons there.
When the guys first said about coming to visit us in Oz it was to be Clives 50th birthday present from Vanessa. The nearer the time for them to arrive got the more stressed we got about what we could do that was really special on Clives birthday. We had originally thought of doing Uluru that weekend, but decided as we would have done that anyway it wasn’t “special enough” So after lots of discussion we decided to book a sunrise balloon flight. We planned not to tell Clive until the night before but I managed to let it slip 3 days before (I’d just finished nights and told someone else completely forgetting that Clive was right there!) Anyway, we had a blast. I think we were all a little nervous, although the boys were completely denying
that! We had to meet up at 5am (happy early morning birthday!) and go out into the middle of nowhere to set up the balloon and take off in time for sunrise, we flew for 40 minutes and landed to champagne breakfast! The take off was a bit bumpy but the landing surprisingly smooth. The feeling is hard to describe, it is very quiet and difficult to tell how high we were. We managed to see quite a few big red kangaroos.
Talking of “Big Red Kangaroos” We managed to get Clive and Vanessa the closest view of a wild one you could ever hope to get….as it bounced off of the front of the van as we drove home one evening! It was about 6 foot tall and yes, unfortunately we did kill it, although Tilly didn’t come off that great either, just got the quote for repairs….almost 3000 bucks!
In Australia i have to work for 6 months before I can take annual leave and so I managed to shuffle and swap shifts so that we had the most time off possible. Luckily there are lots of lovely places not too far away were
you can camp out. Vanessa doesn’t “Do” camping she told us…..ahhhhh….oh well I think we’ve broken her in because she loves it now! We took them up to one of our favorite spots, only 70km from home we can camp for just one night even if I am back on lates the next day. The night we went there we had the most amazing sunset.
The time went so quickly and we were soon on our last weekend. We had been invited to a campout at a cattle station belonging to a friend of a friend on the Saturday, so on the Friday we decided to head out to camp at a place called Gemtree (150km away) were we ate far too much BBQ and drank far too much beer and got up early in the morning to go fossicking for garnets! We have been fossicking once before (for sapphires) and didn’t really find much, only bit’s the size of grains of salt! But we seemed to have more luck with garnets and Vanessa is waiting now for here 4 pieces to be cut and posted to her! The campout on the cattle station (Hamilton Downs) was a
Cool Camel Face!
On the road to Kings Canyon blast, the owners were lovely people and didn’t mind us 4 gatecrashing! We basically ate BBQ, dank beer (hmmm…..seems to be a habit!) and played some Bush Golf, basically hitting a golf ball as hard as you can out into the bush (!?!)
So having exhausted ourselves, Monday morning came around all too fast and we waved the guys off on their journey home.
Hmmmmm…..I started this blog almost 3 weeks ago, but just haven’t had time to finish and publish it until now! Still here it is!
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