Rhod and Anna's World Adventure

We are getting progressively more familiar with early starts so we were not fazed by our 5.15 pick-up to begin our 6 day adventure from Alice Springs to Adelaide.

Our bus consisted of an Olympic-style mix of enthusiastic backpackers; 2 Japanese, 1 German, 9 English, 1 Dane, 2 Canadians, 1 Italian, 2 Swiss, 2 Korean and 2 Scottish.

First stop for the happy touring group was Kings Canyon. Alice Springs promotes itself as the gateway to Kings Canyon, Uluru and Kata Tjuta. It's about 500 Kms away! To an Australian that is just around the corner. To an English man I would need to spend 4 days preparing, checking the weather and discussing my chosen route with everybody I met before, during and after the event so that they could give me their opinions.

Kings Canyon was very impressive. We took a lot of photos of the rocks. Rock photography became the main event for about 3 days. and after a 3 hour gruelling walk in the blazing sunshine drinking hot water we headed off around the corner to Uluru. That will be around a 300 km corner! We arrived at the Uluru campsite in the dark and despite the guide pointing out the rock to us we couldn't pick it out in the darkness. We settled down for the first of 2 nights sleeping under the stars in an authentic Aussie swag.

Uluru sunrise is a big event. You stand and admire the glory of the sun rising behind you and changing the colours of the rock. There is a feeling of great tranquility sitting there and admiring the view with perhaps only...50 other tour groups! Rush hour at Uluru is early. The place is buzzing before dawn. I've never seen so many people up and about at that time of the morning. Perhaps the reason for this is that I'm not normally up and about at that time of the morning. Photos were fired off with great enthusiam. I found it ironic that a nearby american tourist (kitted out with a sun visor and fly net combo) started laughing at the amount of people the event had attracted. A little hypocritical I thought seeing as he was one of them. He then proceeded to turn his back on the main attraction and begin taking photographs of people taking photographs! Strange.

Photos of Uluru do not do it justice. It is mammoth: 350 metres high and 2 km wide with a circumference of 9 km. After having used up one memory card before 8am, our group walked around the base of Uluru for about 2 hours. This was enough for most people. There is also an optional life-threatening climb to the top of the rock. The aboriginal owners make it very clear that they do not want any visitors to climb up the rock for a few reasons. The main one is that they believe it to be sacred and that everyone who walks the trail is damaging its spiritual significance. The other reason is that it is bloody dangerous! Since the path was opened in 1986, 38 people have died by falling off, the most recent death being 4 weeks ago! But that wasn't going to stop some of the lads on our tour. One however didn't feel that he needed to take the advice of our guide. He set off for the 2 hour gruelling climb in the blazing midday sun without suncream or water: "I never get burnt" and "I never usually drink during the day back home in Essex" being the reasons. Prat!

The rest of the day was spent walking at Kata Tjuta (The Olgas which is another impressive collection of rocks) before racing back to the sunset viewing area of Uluru to do battle with the other tour groups as we watched the colours of the rock change. We drove passed the posh tour groups who had designated seats in the prime viewing area and were being served chilled champagne by a waiter. We weren't jealous. We had cheap luke warm bubbly to sip out of plastic mugs AND nibbles! More photos were fired off. You will be pleased to hear that there has been a ruthless culling of the digital photos so there will only be a condensed version for all to see when we get home.