After flying from Cairns to Alice Springs and spending a couple of days exploring the town i set off on a 4 day safari down to Ayer's Rock (Uluru as the Aboriginals call it) and the surrounding area.
In a group of nine people and one tour guide in a big 4 wheel drive truck we set off for Uluru from Alice Springs early in the morning. Most people, including me a month ago, think that Uluru is just a tiny bit south of Alice Springs, but it is in fact over 400km, a 6 hour drive! We stopped off a couple of times including at a camel farm where we had a little ride around on some dromedaries.
Next we went to The Olgas (or Kata Tjuta as the Aboriginals call them) These are a group of big rounded hills made of a similar red sandstone to Uluru. They were amazing and i got some great photos.
Now I have to tell you about the weather during the 2 days we spent looking at, and walking around, Uluru. Nowadays EVERYBODY takes beautiful photos of Uluru in great weather, with the sun bringing out the red and the clear blue sky contrasting with it. I thought i would go for something a bit different so i imported in 2 days worth of heavy dark grey cloud to cover the rock for the whole time we were there. I think it allowed me to take some 'unique' photos.
We watched the sun set over Uluru except we couldnt see the sun and - after a night in a nice big tent with a nice Israeli guy called Barak but not related to US President - we also watched the sunrise over Uluru, again with no sun.
We then looked around the cultural centre before driving on to Kings Canyon ready to explore it early the next morning.
The weather was a bit better for our hike up and around the beautiful Kings Canyon, a huge gorge/canyon with a water source at the top. This water, rare around the outback, means that there is a kind of oasis throughout the bottom of the canyon. This contrasts loads with the hundreds of miles of red dirt and not much else for hundreds of miles around it.
In the evening we went to Ormiston Gorge. This was a very wildlife-filled day, especially the off-road drive through the desert. We saw wild camels, dingoes, wild horses, wild donkeys and later rock wallabys.
The next day we headed to Gosse's Bluff, a huge crater in the desert from a meteorite impact 142 millions years ago. The meteor impact would have been equal to 2200 Megatonnes of TNT explosive, and covered the entire surface of the earth in thick smoke for a few years. All that is left now is a big cliff formation in a cirle, around 22km in circumference. I have put a satellite picture of it onto my blog for this date.
Lastly we drove to Palm Valley. In the middle of a massive amount of rough desert with hardly any vegetation is this valley filled with tropical palm trees! During the wet season there is also often a river flowing there.
This is the end of my trip now, and i hope you guys have enjoyed reading my blog and looking at my pictures!
See you all back in the UK soon!!
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