Road Trip Cairns - Uluru

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Absolute euphoria I think best describes our mood getting on the bus to Cairns. Drunk as skunks describes it pretty well too but we'll go with euphoric for just now.

We arrived in Cairns at about 6 in the morning, after 7 hours on the bus and little or no sleep on account that i was folded up like an old clothes horse behind Lee, who had commandeered the chair I was supposed to be sitting on during the night. We put our bags in storage in Cairns and once again headed off for breakfast to saok up the previous nights beer/wine/goon. Now bear in mind this is about 7am now and who should walk around the corner but one of the guys Lee used to work with at The Ports Corporation in Brisbane. Lee, of course was delighted, given how fresh-faced and nice-smelling we all were.

The plan was to have a day of sleeping, shopping and then drinking (in that order) now that we were free of our jobs and The Malpass Hotel so that is pretty much what we did, we checked into our hostel, chilled out for a couple of hours and then went and decimated our savings accounts, replacing ruined clothes and empty suntan bottles and restoring our shattered faith in people and civilisation in general. The Malpass had taken it out of us far more than we thought possible.

Our plan was to pick up the camper van on the Saturday at 12pm which meant that we could have a good night on the Friday, actually going to proper pubs and clubs that had modern music and more than 4 people in them. Turns out though, that most of us only stayed out until about half eleven-midnight, a symptom of our previous destination that would take some time to get rid of.

We picked the camper van up at 12 on the dot, and were informed that they did not have any vans big enough left from their company so they had gotten one from another company and given this to us instead. The camper we had booked was nice, but basic, plenty room for us but not much else in the way of extra frills. The van they brought out for us though had been kitted out with a flat screen TV, satellite TV connection and a Playstation 2. It was magic, you should have seen the boys eyes light up. We went and got the shopping done and by 4pm we were on our way to Alice Springs via Uluru and The Olgas.

In all truth, we had not even sat down once with a map to discuss our route so we just set off in the direction of Alice Springs and decided to drive as far as we could on the first day before it got dark. We made it to a place called Ravenshoe on the first night, a really small town that got to in the complete pitch darkness so it was a case of just parking by the side of the road, having a few beers, getting dinner on and then heading off to bed. We woke up on the Sunday morning to discover that we were accross the road from Ravenshoe campsite, we just couldn't see it in the darkness.

We decided to head for a town called Hughenden as this seemed like a decent place to stay for the next night and so we got a wee bit gallus to be honest and set the GPS to take us there. Dave was driving and the drive, we reckoned, should have taken us about 4 hours to get there. Now the GPS, unless told otherwise, selects the quickest route for you, and a jolly nice thought that is, but it kinda rips yer knittin' when the quickest route just happens to be along a road that most rally drivers would give a body swerve. Seriously it was like driving accross a ploughed field, and when your wheels are attahced to 3 tons of camper van it certainly ain't the quickest route. Needless to say, five hours and countless fillings shaken loose later, we made it onto the road that took us into Hughenden. Dave was ready to kill someone after his drive so he was plied with beer and given a comfy seat to settle his shattered nerves. Hughenden was also the first time we had the opportunity to empty the van's waste unit. That was loads of fun.

There wasn't much opportunity to actually do much sightseeing on the way to Alice and our days were spent pretty much on the road, either reading, listening to music or playing on Paul's PSP. Our next stop was Mount Isa. Mt Isa is a fairly large town, and it's been built in the middle of nowhere as far as we can see, it's not on a river, doesn't seem to serve any particular purpose but it has grown into a massive town. A billboard at the edge of town proclaims that Greg Norman is one of it's local champions but I'm sure he's from Victoria, maybe he flew over it in a plane once, but there you go, it's that remote that The Great White Shark is probably blissfully unaware he has been claimed by Mt Isa. We got there about 2 in the afternoon so it was off to the swimming pool at the campsite for a dip and a bit of sun worship. For a town that swelters in 35 degree heat for 95% of the year, they also have the coldest outdoor swimming pool this side of the in Santa's back garden. So sunbathing it was then. Our evening meal consisted of $75 worth of merchandise from the Golden Arches, not very interesting but my god it was lovely.

Next day was time for the fun bit, a mammoth 470km slog from Mt Isa to a campsite over the border in the Northern Territory, we filled the van to the top and I drove the first leg of the journey to a roadhouse in the middle of the outback where we would refuel and then make it to our campsite. No problems then. Well you would have thought, wouldn't you that given your utter remoteness from anything else that you would take every given opportunity to put fuel in your vehicle that you were provided with, so when I chose to roar past the petrol station signposted "last fuel for 325km", we might have turned back and topped up. Not a bit of it, it was off to get our photos taken at the Queensland/NT border and to hang with the consequences. The road to the border is unlike any terrain you have ever come accross. It is 1 foot high white grass for as far as the eye can see, absolutely nothing else, no buildings, no cows, no cars, just a straight road that ends at the horizon and then keeps going after that. You have never felt so far away from anything in your life, unless you are a hibby wanting a scottish cup win. About 40km from our Roadhouse stop, Lee and I are anxiously looking at the needle on the fuel guage when the wee orange light pops on, to officially confirm what we had suspected about 50km further back. We didn't have enough petrol to get us to the Roadhouse. Sure enough, the van conks out on us about 15km from where we were supposed to be and we pull over at the roadside. In any other circumstance, you would have been pretty much terrified, as the one place you don't want to break down in is the outback, but as we had Mike and Lewis behind us in probably the very first Volvo ever built, we pulled them over and Mike drove me to the roadhouse to fill up a petrol can and drove me back so save the day. Kind of.

Just to let you know, the Volvo 240 that Mike was driving had been bought 6 weeks earlier by him to get him to work and back, it had cost him $550 (say 200 pounds in old money) and so far it had driven him and Lewis half way top the centre of Oz. It was white with a batman sign on the front bonnet, a Bob Marley one on the left wing and a Che Guevara one on the right. Truly a sight to behold.

Our campsite for the night had to be seen to be belived, it wass apparently Australia's home of UFO sightings and you were apparently "more likely to see one that not to see one" according to the sandwich boards outside the place. It had little green men all over the place directing you to where things were and Elvis cutouts advertising various activities and all the buildings were decorated in supernatural pictures. The shop inside sold all manner of UFO memorabilia and the restaurant through the back was papered in cut-outs from almost every newspaper in the world that had mentioned UFO sightings over the years. It also had a shrine at one end, which contained a large toy gorrilla. Nah, we couldn't figure it out either.

Leaving the campsite the next morning, we were heading first Alice Springs and then on to Uluru, which was a 4 and a half hour drive from Alice. On the way though, we stopped at a rock formation called The Devils Marbles. They are around 20-30 huge boulders in the desetr that look like they have no good business being there. Some of them are maybe 12-15ft high and are balanced on top of each other and some at seemingly impossible angles, but there they are. We had a good climb on them and set off again for Alice Springs. Just as we are entering Alice Springs around lunchtime, the van petrol light comes on again and as we're pulling into the station, it conks out once more, cue 4 bodies jumping out of a moving campervan so that we could push it the rest of the way while it still had momentum, oh how we laughed.

We headed off to Uluru just after lunch so that we could get camped in time for the world famous sunset over Uluru. It was getting to about 4 o'clock and over the horizon comes this massive red rock, standing alone in the desert, absolutely massive it was so out comes the beer in the van and everybody drinks a toast to arriving at Uluru. But it turns out that this was Mount Connor. I've never heard of Mt Connor and neither had anyone else, but given that it is within 30 minutes drive of the real thing, then you would think they'd warn you. We got to the campsite and checked in, it was double the price of any other campsite we had stayed at but what are you gonna do eh ? They can charge what they want so under the circumstances, it could have been alot worse. $25 each lighter and 30 minutes later, we were parked at Uluru. Deckchairs were out, beer was opened and we just sat and took it all in. Part of me, and I don't think I was alone in this, always felt like I wouldn't really feel I had made it to Australia properly until I'd gotten to Uluru. I was right as well, it does take your breath away. It isn't as big as you'd think it would be, but god it's impressive, you can literally make out every bump and scar on it, even from a distance due to the way the sun bounces off it as it sets. It changes from a kind of brown to bright orange to a darker maroon in the space of about 30-45 minutes as the sun disappears. It really felt like we'd made it. A few celebratory beers were had that night, not least for the fact that Mike's volvo had made it half way accross Australia and barely skipped a beat. Bombproof those volvos, bombproof I tells ya.

The alarms went off at 05.00 the next morning, so's that we could get back to the equally impressive sunrise over Uluru. This was on the other side of the rock from the previous evening's show but it was just as good. The rock is just black when you get there but it almost instantly the sun peeks over the horizon. You feel really lucky to be able to see it. After Uluru, we took a drive to Kata Tjutu, sometimes known as The Olgas. They are like a range of rocks similar to Uluru but some are higher and much longer. They are less famous but just as impressive as Uluru and are within a 30 minute drive of the main attraction. There are loads of treks around the Olgas but as we were in a bit of a hurry, so that Lee and I could get back to Alice Springs to catch the train to Darwin, we only took the shorter 750m track to the foot of the Olgas and got a few pictures taken.

Now the plan up to this stage had been that the rest of the guys would stay another night at Uluru, and lee and I would drive Mike's volvo back to Alice Springs to catch the train that night to Darwin. However, on the way to the Olgas, Mike has a wee rush of blood to the head and overtakes us just outside the Uluru carpark. A few hundred yards down the road we drive past Mike and Lewis, being questioned by the Northern Territory boys in blue lights-a-flashin'. We kept on going passed them for about a km and then headed back to see if they were alright. As we got there they had already been told to get on their way and we caught up with them at the carpark at The Olgas. Turns out, overtaking is not allowed in the National Park so Mike was issued with a $90 on the spot fine. Also turns out that Mike's car has no registration, no roadworthy (M.O.T.) and last of all, no insurance. Lee and I told them there and then that there was no way we were driving to Alice in the thing and so we decided to hire a car once we got back to Uluru. Mike, not wanting to pay a $600 fine for not having the correct docs decided to just leave the car in the car park at The Olgas and hitch alift back to the campsite with us. It is a fairly common thing for travellers to leave unwanted vehicles in car parks around Oz for other to just pick up and use. More on this story later.

Once we had gotten out to Uluru airport to pick up our rental car, Lee and I left the guys as they were staying another night so that they could do the climb up Uluru, and we headed back to Alice Springs to meet up with the GHAN, the ramous railway, which would take us on the next stage of our journey to Darwin. The rest of the guys were flying onto Perth and we would meet up with them all in Thailand in 3 days.

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Comments

[Scottie B]

Memories!
Alright mate, just catchin up on your blog and ur making me feel right depressed. We must have the same photographic eye coz I've got exactly the same pictures as you except instead of my lovely puss its your ugly puss. Know what you mean about the whole Uluru thing and glad to hear you didn't climb it. Tan on mate, love to lee, up the swannies, feck the hertz!! GGTTH!