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Published: December 9th 2006
Big lorries...
Tonka toys really!We left Cairns behind and decided to head to the "red centre".
It was going to be a lot of driving but I(H) really wanted to visit Ayres Rock and Alice Springs so we set off from Cairns and drove to Townsville and then headed towards the centre. We had a brief stop in Undarra to check out the lava tubes created many many years ago by volcanoes. It was OK but I(H) was more excited to see my first wild emu!!! John as always was interested in the spectacular structures we were looking at!! I (j) found it really amazing to see tunnels that have been formed by lava along time ago. Its not often you get to see such amazing structures that were there long before man put his foot in the mud!
From here we basically spent our time driving. We stopped briefly (5 minutes) at the devils marbles which are just a collection of rocks that kind of look like marbles (if you squint and stand on your head!!!) they were quite weird I suppose.
The driving was pretty entertaining at times crossing huge planes with no junctions for, well such a really long
Warning to cars!
Look out for the hungry cows! time. Some, well lots of the roads are just dead straight and you can travel like that for most of the day without seeing a car or a bend in the road!!
A funny little 5 minute stop was in Tenant Creek, not really a place to stop nor a friendly place! My advise to anyone passing through is don't stop!!
Finally we made it to Alice Springs and spent the day there. It was OK but nothing like what I expected although I'm not really sure what I did expect. It was just another town with a shopping centre and McDonalds!!
So we headed down to Ayres Rock which was everything I(H) expected. We didn't stay long - just got some pics and headed over to the other rock formation in the park, which I can't remember the name of, to take some photos. Then we decided to watch Ayres Rock during sunset. Unfortunatley the clouds rolled in so we didn't get the spectacular show everyone always raves about. However, we did brave the first drops of rain though and were then rewarded by a spectacular electrical storm which, was pretty cool when the lightning lit
Rocks, Undara!
Here's one for you Lyns! up the rock!!
From Ayres Rock we headed to Kings Canyon. John managed to convince me that doing the rim walk would be a good idea so we grabbed a rucksac full of water each and headed off on the 3ish hour walk. However, when they said steep climb I wasn't quite prepared for what was in store and had flashbacks to freezing at the top of a pyramid in Mexico. I'm not good with heights especially when steps without handrails are involved!!! So we get to the top and John suggests we just go back if I'm not up to the rest of the walk - yeah right!!! I was not going back down the way we had come up regardless of how far it was to walk!!! Glad we did it in the end though as the views were pretty spectacular!!
After Kings Canyon we headed towards Darwin, we stopped off to view the hot springs in Mataranka - home of the never never!!! While there we got chatting to someone and they were working just down the road picking watermelons so 2 days later we started our first day as watermelon pickers!!!
Watermelon picking
Rocks, Undara!
Here\'s another for you Lyns! was great we had a laugh and really enjoyed the experience. Don't get me wrong, it was really hard work in really hot temperatures but it helped us loose a bit of weight and start getting a bit fitter (just need to keep it up now).
Shortly afterwards, about two weeks I (j) buggered off to Brisbane to attend a Skydiving boogie whilst Hannah stayed working on the farm picking melons!!
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