Day 87: Leaving Alice Springs for Uluru

Tuesday 1st March

Big water hole

Driving from Alice Springs

Uluru!!!

Distance:

Total Distance:

I'm writing in the bus right now. Here's the view

And that's most of today!

Though first we had a quick trip down to the big water hole near to Alice Springs. A series of rocky hills divides the country near Alice Springs. One of the reasons the town is there is due to the small divide in this range that sits nearby. Here a dry river bed, rail track and highway all allow movement from one side to the other. Other than this the only other accessible pass is hundreds of kilometre's away.

However about an hour up the road a small divide is evident in the hills. A small creek passes through this point. Where it hits the rocks it has warn a small pond which is filled with brown, tannin laden, water. Here we went for a cool morning swim. A beautiful little place for a little exercise and bonding before our 7 hour drive down to Uluru.

The rest of the day involved watching red desert and a few bushy shrubs roll past the windows. We'd see a few more hills, rocks, and trees. There was a service station next to an Emu farm- that didn't serve Emu! Very disappointed. I got a lot of writing done, did some reading, many of us slept. This is Australia. It's the size of Europe, bigger than the USA, we have thousands of miles to cover. The day after tomorrow we're set to do even more!

Finally, though, we made it to Uluru, the original name for Ayre's Rock. We were there just in time for sunset. I've put many more photos of Uluru on my brand new Instagram account name is Dr_ama_dinosaur there's plenty of photos on there and I'm trying to add to them as much as possible.

 

That night we slept in swags again, under the desert stars.

Day 74: Driving to Yamba for the beach

Wednesday 17th February 

Hung over, drove...drove...drove...food in the mountains, down to the beach for a swim

Distance: 430km

Total Distance: 11735km

Mildly hung over we spent much of today driving towards Yamba. The township has been awarded Australia's "Most Beautiful Township" award and is viewed as the next place to grow into significance. 

I can sort of see why people are moving here. It's a nice place. Decent beaches (mind the jellyfish), there's a harbour for all of the fishing boats. The countryside is lush and green from having enough rain (unlike some of Oz). We passed through large fields of sugar cane which is processed locally and exported in huge amounts.

The afternoon was spent on Yamba beach. A few went swimming in the sea until someone got a light jellyfish sting. I got out my miniature kite to play around with as the girls took to sunbathing.

Eventually there was just my German mate, Hendrick, and I left. At one end on the beach there's a sea water pool- a place to swim free of jellyfish! We went to do a few laps, but ended up in the defense pool. With the tremendous waves this beach gets the pool should get swamped every 5 seconds. Instead there's a crenalated wall which reduces the waves power. Behind this is a small pool into which the waves fall, dropping their debris as they lose power. Then a thick, low level wall before the main pool. This keeps the swimming pool relatively flat and clear. It also means there's a poo, full of warm, fresh, sea water that bubbles away- like a spa pool. We joined an Australian couple to enjoy the refreshing, healing, relaxing properties of several tons of the Pacific Ocean pushing us up against the dividing wall a few times a minute.

For dinner I tried the local Fish and Chips. Not as good as NZ or the UK! Someone must be doing it wrong, I'll have to try again elsewhere. Equally the beer was good, but not good enough to aid my pool playing. The guide and I won again, but I just wasn't getting my shots in.

We did have a decent chat at dinner though. All the phones were piled in the middle of the table so people would stop worshipping them. After this everyone opened up more. Nothing like proper civilised conversation on an evening.