Week Three (3)

10th January - 17th January 2009

Our neighbour, who is up with the sunrise, mainly because the flies are up as well, tells us the road from Alice Springs to Cairns has been washed away. We had spent the evening before looking on the internet for news items about the storms in Queensland, but out here a main road being washed away is not newsworthy and yet the opening of a new chain saw repair centre, gets lots of attention. We forgot to mention the flies, the further North we go the more invasive into our personal space are the flies. They are like the news items about Children in Africa, where you see them with flies on their faces, we watch our fellow campers head for the showers, all doing the “Australian Wave” in front of their faces…. After doing a similar wave ourselves and speaking with Blue Diamond and her brother, we confirm the road to Cairns is no longer and we will have to double back on ourselves if we want to get to Queensland. Blue Diamond, who by the way is not wearing a bra, according to Julie, because Steve never noticed, returns to flirt and check out the competition, the competition is too much, so she tries to persuade us to go to Darwin instead, and then she bounces off into the distance. We drive and fill up, fill up and drive, we see a dingo, a whistling kite, a golden lizard and some Major Mitchells Cockatoos, before our first sighting of Uluru. 

                     

Major Mitchell

First Sighting of Uluru

We book in and then set off to see Kata Tjuta, another red stone monolith, which some might think even more imposing.

KataTjuta

Then back to Uluru and we settle down to await the sunset. We sit in the van watching the other sightseers doing the Australian wave as the flies are out in force, eventually we have to get out and the sun sets on Uluru.

Sunset at Uluru

“Is that it” says Julie, we decide to go for the Silhouette pictures tomorrow morning, which means up at 5am. Steve goes to sleep with the words “It better bloody well be worth it” ringing in his ears….

Having set the alarm, Steve is awoken by the sound of footsteps on the gravel outside, he listens, analyses and wakes Julie and tells her to go check it out…. Having decided it’s someone up even earlier to get the sunrise pictures, he puts the kettle on and Julie is pampered yet again….No time for breakfast, we are on the road and second to arrive at the sunset viewing station, no it’s not the wrong place, we want Silhouette type pictures. 

The Road to Uluru

Sunrise at Uluru

Steve takes about 105 pictures,

5 of which may be okay, thank goodness for Digital cameras…. 

Here comes the Sun

We then race round to the sunrise viewing station as the sun comes up, don’t quite reach it as someone has saved us a space by putting a ‘No stopping’ sign up, we stop, why not, no one else is around and take pictures, soon someone else spots us and stops to take pictures, not content with this we then race back to where we were at first to get a photo of the sun peaking over the top of Uluru, We miss it by about a minute…… We then set off for our breakfast, it’s 2 hours away in a roadhouse at a major junction on the Stuart Highway. We arrive, feeling famished, parched and slightly jaded. We leave famished, parched and even more jaded, it’s a dump, chips for breakfast, already made toasted sandwiches, instant coffee and a tour bus queue about 40 deep…….

Road Train

Not being what we had in mind we set off to a rest area and Julie makes cereals and tea . Now I don’t think we have mentioned the fridge in the van before but it is struggling in the 38 degree heat. Julie asks how many lumps of milk I would like in my tea…… Soya milk tea is disgusting so off we set again and stop at Jim Cottrell and the singing dingo place, Jim has obviously fallen on bad times so we stop for a tea which we have to make ourselves and then pay him for the privilege. We are no longer hungry after seeing the state of the table cloths, so depart with the intention of not stopping again until Alice Springs. We are pleasantly surprised by Alice Springs, it is clean, modern, tidy and as up-to-date as any of the Capital Cities. There are more Aborigines around than we have seen before but they keep themselves to them selves. We then book into the camp site, next to a couple of serious campers, you know the guy with the Hat, white fuzzy beard, sandals and socks, stripy shirt, table and chairs, canopy the works. Somehow Steve being the amateur camper he is, winds up Mr Serious and he soon disappears into his campervan, never to be seen again. Dinner is a quiet affair, seated outside the van under the tree, only half way through dinner do we discover, why Mr Serious does not sit there, things, including Galah droppings comply with the rules of gravity…..

Have Dinner under us will you....

Keeping in Touch

A late start and we are off to the Alice Springs Desert Park, a truly educational and interesting day, where we learn from an Aborigine girl how to find water in the desert without a water vending machine.

Julie is ecstatic with the number of birds flying above us, whilst on the ground there are so many lizards running around she actually forgets about the flies……

Australian Ringneck

Black Kite

Due to the flooding in Cairns, the tropical cyclone and the only road from Alice to Cairns having been washed away, we set off later than expected back down the Stuart Highway to Port Augusta, we drive through the sunset seeing three Wedge Tail Eagles having a free dinner from some road kill and then two hours of night driving watching out for the little bounders that suddenly appear in your headlights at this time of night. We arrive back at Marla and check in to an overnight campsite, where due to the time, we defer from the fillet steak we had bought and have tomato soup instead, half way through dinner, Julie decides, it’s condensed soup….. Next time she will add some water.....................      We are off early and drive all day back along the road we had travelled up only a few days earlier, we continue through Port Augusta and check in at a Country Camp site surrounded by Galahs and Possums, we watch the sunset and then collapse into unconsciousness….

Brown owl

Next day we arrive in Broken Hill having rammed the Fridge door closed as it kept opening every time we turned left. Julie not feeling so good so first stop Pharmacy, 2^nd stop Charlotte’s Coffee shop, Steve walks out feeling better, what’s going to go wrong?  We go shopping buying essentials, like an Ipod transmitter….. We then get back, set up camp and Steve decides to have a beer in the setting sun, opening the temperamental fridge he finds all the beers have frozen solid, one having exploded…. No beer tonight, just a sunset fridge cleaning job……dinner next having bought a Curry sauce, yuck, it’s not a sauce, it’s a paste, dinner goes in the bin and we go to bed, stinking of beer but not having drunk a drop.

Superb Fairy Wren

After 4 days driving and having driven for 2300kms, we are out of the outback and in farming country, stopping overnight in a small Marino sheep and cotton farming town, called Warren. We are glad to be out of the outback, it all looked so poor, dirty, scruffy and unfriendly. There is obvious hostility in some towns between the local residents and the indigenous people, we don’t play their game, always replying, ‘we have not seen any evidence of that’ Tomorrow we have another 6 hours driving and will end up in what appears to be civilisation, as we know it. It might sound like a drag all this driving but it has been interesting seeing how the countryside changed so dramatically and so quickly, plus the squeals of delight from the passenger seat, every time a wild kangaroo is seen. The drivers highlight is having the sat nav tell him he has a right turn to make 765kms away and then actually executing it. Over the past 4 days, we have possibly only actually turned a corner about 6 times. …. No disasters today and a beer to finish it off with, no wonder we are both still smiling……

We are awoken by the screeching of 200 plus Galahs and Cockatoo’s that we watched last night as they settled in the trees around us, thinking this is nice, this morning we are thinking some thing else…..

We arrive in Armidale early afternoon, this is the biggest town we have stayed in since Sydney and our expectations are somewhat high as we prepare to do some retail therapy, some relaxing in a upmarket coffee house and the fact that we can just wander around soaking up the Saturday afternoon sophistication of city life. Let’s walk say’s Steve, the exercise will do us good and I might just have a drink or twooooooo. We arrive and find the place is closed half day Saturday, the only shop open is “Best for Less” which would not look out of place in the side roads of Luton, there is absolutely nothing open. The map Steve is carrying showing all the main restaurants, galleries and other points of interest now only has one function, a bloody fly swat……