Australia Part 1

Oceania » Australia
March 25th 2014

Published: May 7th 2014

I arrived at Sydney airport and my cousin Amy picked me up, took me back to her and Tim's place, where I met Mia, and off we went for lunch at a fairly new restaurant called Sagra (I learnt later that Sagra in Italian meant organic market of sorts). We had OX cheeks, and pasta/breaded balls that wasn't actually pasta but it was really good anyways. Then Tim and Mia went home in the car and Amy and I walked back to their house, Amy pointing out shops and areas as well as explaining the area's history to me. We stopped by the ice cream shop, really good which at that time of days had barely a line, but usually there was a queue going round the block. When we got back, we had tea and then drove over to Annie's house. We were met by a bouncing dog named Alfie (still think he should be called Tigger), and a nice welcome by Annie and John. Gave John and Tim their bottles of wine, and Mia her stuffed sheep toy. On Wednesday, Annie and I went Bondi beach, fish & chips, we briefly lost the car (we couldnt remember where we had parked it), we then went to south head(?) cliffs, and watched three mast ship sail out of the harbour. Afterwards we came back to the house and in the evening I went out for Thai with Annie and John. On Thursday, Annie and I went into central Sydney,I got some Japan railways voucher, we went to the Westfield with Prada and Miu Miu (didnt realise that Westfields was an Autralian brand), then the fish market (I nearly slipped). We then went to Amy's, dropped off the fish, then Annie, Amy and I went for really good sushi. Dinner was at Annie and John's house and it involved cooked oysters, muscles, fish and wine. Such an amazing meal. On Friday, I flew to Alice Springs, arrived 1pmish, and discovered Annie and Tim weren't lying about the fact that there were lots of flies. I got a free ride to hostel, one of the girls in the room was Atsuko from Japan, and 2 girls from Germany - Eva and Selena. Eva and Selena seemed young (kind of naive) but nice all the same. We had to sign in to the Rock Tour office (the company I would be going to see Uluru and King's Canyon with), discovered Atsuko was not coming with us as she was going with another tour company. We then went to buy fly nets, which makes us look stupid but it was a necessary evil. For dinner Atusko and I had beer and pizza. The 2 Germans met more German speakig people and spent rest of hours talking solely German, so we left them to it. Saturday we woke at 5, had breakfast, got called onto the first bus. Atsuko grabbed her bus first before us. Was on the bus with 3 Belgians, 2 Italians, 1 Austrian, 3 Germans, 1 Swiss, 2 Australians, 1 Irish,2 Chinese, and later we picked up 4 Danish. The Australians kept to themselves, the Irish and one German spoke English but hard talk and the rest just spoke German or their respective languages. It was very hard to connect with anyone, left me frustrated. It pretty much set the tone for the rest of the time. Our tour guide was called Pip. First day we drove 3 hours, had second breakfast and toilet break. 2 more hours with a brief 5 min stop, another hour, picked up Danish people, had lunch, drove 1 more hour, and we finally got to the cultural centre at Uluru. We spent an hour there, then went for a walk round part of Uluru that was not always seen by other people. It was so hot and lots of flies, thankfully I had a fly net. Then walked up another path this time with Pip, who explained some of the rock formations and what the aboriginal believed. After that, we got back in the minibus, drove to where we would watch sunset over Uluru... it was pretty cool. There were lots of clouds but it was sunny too and there was a rainbow above Uluru. After the sun had set, we had dinner and beer, and then got back into the minibus and drove back out of park (not allowed to stay in park at night)We got to our campsite where we set up our swags, played beer pins with the other tour bus which it turns out I was not bad at and finally went to sleep. The next day we woke at 5am. We drove back to the sunset spot to watch the sunrise. The plan was to have breakfast before the flies came out but it didn't work as the flies came out early and in droves. We then drove to Kata Tjuta, which is another piles rocks, formed like Uluru but broke apart. We walked for a few hours, then drove to onwards to Kings Canyon...before that we had lunch back at the campsite where we stayed the night before in a netted eating area, but still the flies got in. Rumblings about how not much food especially from Swiss before driving to King's Canyon. This took about 4-6 hours. Interesting choice of music on bus. Dinner, everyone helped out. Before that, we picked dead wood for camp fire, pip dug for Wichetty grub e.g. caterpillar. Male Australian tried it raw. Dinner was chilli con carne. Showers then slept by fire, other people slept in the grass. Not sure who had the better idea when fearing for snakes. I heard rustling at 4am, realised other people were getting up, and was annoyed I wasn't woken up. We had breakfast, with no flies, drove to King's Canyon. We started the walk at 6am, still no flies, got to the top before sunrise where there was a cool breeze. Pip taught us a bit more about the aboriginal plants and uses, we saw the Garden of Eden, and went back down to the car park by 9am ish. We got back into the minibus, drove for 6/7 hours, had lunch and stopped at the camel farm for a bit. Finally we arrived back at Toddy's Hostel by 4.30 pm, and can say I was happy to never see these guys again.

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