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Published: November 22nd 2007
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Sydney
Who is this fella? He keeps cropping up in peoples blogs. Our Thailand adventure ended up being a tad longer than anticipated, as a painfully long 8 hour delay resulted in us knowing Bangkok airport a little too well. Unfortunately, the delay was announced after we'd changed all our Thai Baht into Aussie Dollars leaving us with just enough shrapnel for a small bottle of water and a phone call to our chauffeur in Oz.
We finally arrived in Sydney, knackered, and opted for a taxi. We were faced with a taxi driver who could barely speak English and nearly ended up going to the hospital rather than the hostel. When we finally made him stop driving round in circles we got out into the rain and found our hostel on foot! (Was this really Australia?) After a kip, some fresh clothes, and a chocolate bar that, according to the culinary genius that is Laura, "tasted rank" (we are reliably informed that rankness is due to anti-melt stuff they put in), we headed for Circular Quay. There we met our mate Neil from home, and his girlfriend Lauren at The Opera Bar for a few beers. With the backdrop of the Tyne, sorry Harbour Bridge and The Opera House we really
Trephina Gorge
The deer looked a bit funny. were in Australia!
The next morning we flew out to Alice Springs, where it definitely wasn't raining, and got very excited on sight of our first 'kangaroo warning' road sign. We drove out to Trephina Gorge in the East MacDonnell Range, and travelled along "paved" roads across dried up river beds. On the way back, Laura suddenly exclaimed 'ooh, there's a deer!', before the slow realisation that deer don't actually stand on their back legs or have pouches, and that it was in fact a kangaroo.
We rushed back to our hotel for sunset so that we could feed the really cute rock wallabies that lived on the adjacent hillside and came down to feed every evening. They took the food right out of your hand really gently and used their paws to push your hand down to the right level. Some of them even had ickle joeys in their pouches.
The next day we drove to the Red Centre. Five hours of red desert scrubland and lots of sightings of nothing more exciting than floppy eared cows, we were at Ayers Rock (Uluru, but no-one calls it that). Australians seem to not have heard about political
Trephina Gorge
This is a river! correctness, their favourite cheese is even called "Coon"!
Being cheap and from the north we had decided to camp at Ayers Rock and were pleasantly surprised by the campground which had amazing facilities and was full of rabbits and noisy gallaghs. We put up our tent next to Bruce (we kid you not) and Fran (rather dissapointingly not called Sheila) and headed off to The Rock for sunset, watching it glow orange before the light faded.
The next day we did 3 of the walks around the base of The Rock, one of which was great as it ended at a very peaceful waterhole with loads of birds catching insects. We learnt about the aboriginal stories that tell how Ayers Rock was created. Evidently some snakes were attacked by other snakes using spears (hence holes in the rock), they killed a snake, angering a bigger snake, who did something leaving a black streak on the side of the rock in the shape of a snake.
In the evening we went to 'The Night Sky Show' which was amazing. It was held at the Ayers Rock (not Uluru) Observatory, away from all the light pollution, which means you
Alice Springs
A scene from Alien? can see so many more stars, plus you can actually see more in the southern hemisphere anyway. The astronomer guided us through stars and galaxies with the coolest light saber laser thing you're ever likely to see outside of the movies and we even got to see shooting stars as the earth was currently experiencing a meteor storm.
Got up at stupid o clock the next morning for sunrise, and then headed off to The Olgas (Kata Tjuta) for the Valley Of The Winds walk. The Valley was unbelievably green compared to the surrounding desert, and we even saw a wallaroo (yes, that is a real animal, and we haven't made it up).
Nearly forgot to mention the flies - it's not necessarily the volume of flies, as much as it's each individual flys' unrelenting persistence in its desire to be down your ear, up your nose, or in your mouth, that sends us and particularly Andy round the bend.
After a few days we headed back to Alice for another evening with the Wallabies, before flying onto the next leg down the east coast.
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Russ Thorne
non-member comment
Nice!
Loving the blog so far, keep it up! My feet are getting itchier by the minute! Eight weeks until takeoff... R! x