Day 46 - The Truth Hurts

We were up to check into our normal double room for the next two nights at 10:00, though we lingered around until about 12 when it was ready for us.

Next we had to go do our first proper load of laundry since we’ve set off so the next couple of hours were spent doing that and having a huge lunch (a chicken parmy and a cider each) during this time.

We were taking our time today as we know we’ve another full day here and so felt we had the luxury of being able to do so.

We later strolled down to the botanical gardens here and had a wander around the town, though by the time we’d arrived there most of the shops were closing. That’s when we decided to head back and book ourselves on the free Haigh’s Chocolate Factory tour; that was the plan until the receptionist crushed these hopes by telling us tomorrow is Sunday and the factory is closed on Sundays… Nightmare! This is the one thing we really wanted to do in Adelaide but due to the holiday feel of this trip, we’d completely lost track of the days.

We’re not sure what tomorrow will have on the cards now as it’s Sunday so we’ll just have to wait and see.

Day 45 - Dizzy Corrie

We got up and went to check into our room for the night… the laundry room. Yes this was a room full of all the bed linen and sheets etc. The receptionist had made us aware of this room if we wanted it to save walking across town to much more expensive hostels. We had a look and didn’t mind being surrounded by all the clean sheets, plus this room had an en-suite and double bed; also this room was half the price it would’ve been elsewhere, a steal at $60 for the two of us.

After dumping our bags we made our way to the YHA hostel to meet most of the tour group and go out for lunch.

After a catch-up and saying a few farewells we headed back to the room; unfortunately this is where we stayed for most of the day due to Danny’s afternoon snooze!

Danny was awake in time to go and get food again so we made the short trip to the pizza place and got a huge pizza and a couple of drinks.

We’d heard about a festival (South Australia – the festival state) or parade type thing that was happening this evening so went to investigate. We got there nice and early to get some front row places on the main street where all the performers etc would pass. Corrie had her camera at the ready and the countdown to the Adelaide Fringe Parade began… but then Corrie felt faint. Danny sped to the nearby shop for some water, leaving Corrie sat on the floor and guarding our prime positions. When he returned she was not there however, though luckily she hadn’t strayed far and was laid on the pavement metres away! Danny insisted on Corrie drinking the cold water and remaining seated for a while, claiming he’d try and figure out the camera settings and get some shots of the parade. This seemed to stir something in Corrie and she was back up again within five or so minutes, camera in hand. As we’d lost our places we couldn’t really see what was going on due to the five person deep crowd lining the whole street. Corrie came up with a solution to try and get at least a couple of decent photos; the stick your arm in the air, point, shoot and hope method. Time will tell if there are any keepers in the fifty or so snaps she took before calling it quits. 

 

We then slowly walked back to the hostel, getting more water on the way, eventually reaching the less hectic space of our laundry room for some sleep.

Day 44 - The Journey to Adelaide

No surprises in guessing that we had another early start to the day (05:45) as we aimed to escape the sun for as long as possible on the first walk out in the Flinders Ranges. We all set off on the 4.1km hike to the summit of the Dutchmans Stern though one member of the group did have to be sent back due to her cripplingly slow pace. This was a hard walk, all uphill and very zig-zaggy; though not as tough as yesterday’s one. From the top you could see for miles around again as it was a clear and sunny day. The views today, we think, just beat those we got from the summit of Ohlssen. After soaking in the sights, and Corrie eating all the biscuits, we sped back down the hill to go back to the hostel for lunch… at 11:00.

The rest of the day was spent making the long drive to the city of churches, Adelaide, with just a few toilet stops to break-up the monotony of the drive.

We got to the city at about 17:00 and checked into the Adelaide Travellers Inn before getting some info on things to do here, and also some leaflets about tours to Kangaroo Island.

We then made a 20 minute walk to Chinatown and a Asian food court where we got some tea; judging by the tears streaming down his face, it was probably a bit spicy for Danny’s taste!

After this we went back for an early night with the joyous prospect of a slight sleep in tomorrow – bliss!

Day 43 - The Flinders Ranges

What a surprise, an early start and off we went to the Flinders Ranges where all but one of the group set about hiking up Mt Ohlssen. This was a 6.4km round trip that would take a good few hours to complete; it was comparable to the toughness of Castle Hill in Townsville but this walk had some climbing involved also. The panoramas from the summit were pretty spectacular – one of the girls said they were better than the views from the Table-Tops in South Africa. We could see the Wilpena Pound bowl and miles and miles into the distance. Danny also got the chance to see what he’d wanted to see in Oz; a wedge-tailed eagle soaring overhead, with Corrie getting a pretty awesome shot of it as it circled above. Part way down, we all came to a halt as there was a very long line of processional caterpillars cutting along the path. The line must have been at least 3 metres long! The walk back down was a lot nicer than going up (apart from two of the group who did their ankles in) but lunch was even better! Some went in a pool after lunch before we carried on with the day’s activities.

The next little stop was at Yourambulla Caves where a 10 minute walk took us to the site where we could have a look at some authentic aboriginal paintings. Unfortunately there’s no way of finfing out the true meaning of these markings as the tribe who did them were wiped out by the white-men.

Next we visited the ruins of an old village from the 19^th century – Kanyaka Homestead. This wasn’t very impressive but was a good example of an abandoned settlement.

Our final outing was at Warren Gorge where we went on a stroll to try and spot some yellow-footed rock wallabies. We found them and kangaroos again; we’ve seen more and more wild kangaroos as we’ve ventured down from Alice Springs. This place is one of only two where you can see these wallabies as they were close to extinction; a programme has been set-up to replenish their numbers.

Then it was back to the hostel place for tea and an attempt at an early night (also to give our feet a rest.)

Day 42 - Road trip day

Another early start, this time up at 06:00 for about half of the group who wanted to go noodling; this is basically looking for opals. There we were, all sat around in the rubble amongst the piles of discarded rock from the mines, hunched over examining rock after rock and then discarding rock after rock! A few actually found opal, but not the real good stuff; we found a couple of slithers of what could well be low grade opal. This was a dream crushing experience really,  on a chilly morning with the sun rising, as we’d set our sights on finding a huge black opal so there would be no more noodles to eat on our seven month trip!

We picked up the others and headed out of town, stopping briefly at the Coober Pedy sign (mounted under the mining device known as a Coober Pedy blower – a rock vacuum invented in C.P) and the painted wall; including a painted on Mad Max and the three from Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

We had a quick stop in Glendambo for fuel etc but the main attraction here was its population sign: 22,500 sheep, 2,000,000 (approx.) flies, 30 people!

Next on the list of stops was Lake Hart; a huge salt lake where we stopped to take pictures and also saw what the cobweb-like things in the bushes along the roads are – caterpillar nests.

Lunch was in the military spy town of Woomera. This place was an odd town, very quiet and very empty, yet with lots of amenities. There are only about 300 residents here yet they have: a theatre, bowling alley, and a very green football oval. It was like being in a ghost town but we had a look around and saw some of the wreckage from fallen satellites and rockets that were launched from the salt lake we’d just been to.

After lunch it was on to Quorn where we’d be staying for the next two nights; and we managed to end up with a room to ourselves again, which meant that we had basically received the private room upgrade for free!

Day 41 - Off to Coober Pedy

We had the first lie-in of the trip and so were up at 07:00 this morning ready to make our way down to the Opal mining town of Coober Pedy.

Our first stop of the day was at a place called the Breakaways; formed by the receding of the inland sea millions of years ago and leaving this vast and picturesque landscape after erosion etc (won’t bore you with the details… Google it! ) This place, along with much of the route we had/ would be taking, is also where lots of “Priscilla Queen of the Desert” was filmed – a film our guide made us watch but we couldn’t hear it very well so we’ll have to watch it again for the dialogue! Here we saw a large rock known as the emu, though we couldn’t see the resemblance, and another formation known as the castle/ salt and pepper/ the two dogs due to their look and contrasting white and brown colours.

We moved a little further on the dirt road we’d taken (this made us all really feel well and truly in the outback) until we pulled up at a long fence; the world’s longest fence no less and actually the world’s longest man made structure (longer than the Great Wall even.) It used to be over 9,000km long but is now over 5,000km long and is known as the Dingo Fence/ Dog Fence. The fence was basically set up; individually in sections to keep dingoes from getting onto the cattle station land and eating sheep until the farmers decided to just join all of these fences together. Someone does have the job of maintaining this entire fence too which must be fun!

Just before getting into Coober Pedy town we pulled up at a sign warning us of the million or so abandoned mining holes all over the place and letting us know to mind our steps… Our guide informed us not to anger the locals as it’s easy to go missing here!!!

Coober Pedy is the opal mining capital of the world and mines over 80% of the world’s opals. It only has around 3,500 residents of over 40 nationalities and over 50% of those residents live underground; as we would be doing tonight. This place was chosen for much shooting from films such as Mad Max and Pitch Black due to its landscape. On our tour of the town we had a brief stop at the lookout, not that there’s much to see from it, and this is where we saw the Big Winch and the metal tree (made as C.P didn’t used to have any trees and so the locals introduced them here, making this sculpture to commemorate that.) We also stopped at the Cemetery where, resting in peace, a couple of interesting characters lie. The first: a man called Crocodile Harry who wrestled crocs all his life (don’t think he was killed by one though) and seemed to be a hit with the ladies as there’s another site to do with him and it’s adorned with lots of ladies underwear apparently! The second grave’s for a local man who discovered he had bowel cancer; he didn’t tell anyone about this but instead took out a $200,000 loan and bought everyone in the town a beer before later passing away. His headstone is a beer keg which says “have a drink on me” which we thought was pretty funny! We also passed a shop where a man sells lots of Pitch Black movie set pieces (all which look rather battered now) but were advised not to go into the yard or shop as he’s a very good salesman!

We then went to our underground accommodation where our guide sorted the two of us out with a room to ourselves (the other couple had paid extra to have private rooms all the trip and we’d had them each day so far for free!) It’s an odd sight as most of the town is underground but you still see houses on the surface; though you see lots of mandatory air vents poking out of the ground giving away the fact of more rooms underground. One house is meant to have over 20 rooms as many are under the earth. This type of room also ensures that the temperature is always about 24 degrees regardless of the outside temperature which would make a nice change from the sweaty past couple of nights.

We then had a cave tour where we were shown more examples of the living conditions of the houses, along with: examples of the different kinds of opals, how the mining was done, a chance to see their “pet” deadly red back spider (which Danny thought was fake until it moved – everyone was very cautious when walking underneath it!), and finally a look around the opal shop where Danny got Corrie an early birthday present – an opal necklace… though a cheaper one due to the budget!

Red Back not in focus but on the model's right side of chest

We then had some free time before tea so we nipped next door and took a picture of the, rather battered, ship from Pitch Black. We also went to the supermarket for a couple of things, coming across Sambuca flavoured coffee beans – Yuk!

Later we all walked down the road to see the feeding of young big bed kangaroos at a kangaroo orphanage. We also saw baby roos and a picture of a new-born survivor that’s clinging on for life in the back room there.

After pizza at a restaurant over the road we all got ready and went for a few drinks at the underground bar in town before calling it a day.

Day 40 - Ayers Rock and The Olgas

Once again we were up at the crack of dawn; well before it actually at about 04:00 again. This was so we could have breakfast and then go and watch the sunrise at Ayers Rock. It’s a funny place there, almost like a production line with all the tour companies doing the same thing; a long snake of buses and coaches light the way to the viewing point where everyone sets up their cameras and shuffles for the best views. The sunrise gave better views than the sunset and Danny thought it’d be pretty impressive if someone came here every day for a year and captured all of the sunrises and sunsets then put them all together as every one of them is different… Needless to say, Corrie liked the sound of this idea.

After sunrise we got dropped off to do half of the base walk; only the half in the shade as the temperature was set to rocket again today. This was a nice walk; there were lots of flies but Danny was prepared and donned his rather fetching face net, whilst Corrie got some payback on Mother Nature with some fly-swatting! It’s such an impressive place, Ayers rock, and it’s a place that makes you feel quite small in the world; especially when the huge rock is just like an iceberg in that the most part of it is underground – it’s easy to see why it’s such a big tourist attraction.

Our next stop was Kata Tjuta/ The Olgas where we went for a walk at this huge rock formation, and again only did the short walk due to the rising sun. These two places are pretty much the only blips on the horizon for miles and miles in this area and the explanation of how scientists believe they were formed was pretty impressive… but very long so we won’t be writing it here!

The next stop was at a place we’d passed on the way to our Uluru camp; a very large rock, not dissimilar to Ayers Rock, called Mt Conner. Due to it being on the way to the Big Red Rock, many tourists will stop and take pictures of this, mistaking it for Ayers Rock and leave happy with their “fake” snaps. This very thing has earned Mt Conner the nickname “Fooluru” with its cheeky deceptiveness!

We continued on until we got to Erldunda; a place very close to the actual centre of Australia (and the closest we’d get to the centre on our trip.) Danny took the chance to get a couple of shots of potential Big Things (Big Echidna and Big Lizardy Thing) though we’re not sure if they are yet. This stop is where we and four others were to join a new tour group to continue our journey south towards Adelaide. For some bizarre reason our new driver was made to swap her bus with another one and she really didn’t look impressed. It turned out that this one didn’t have air-con – a true nightmare as the bus was almost full; with 19 people including the driver, and the temperature was 46 degrees!!! There was nothing she could get done to fix this and she was told to take us the four hours to Mala where we’d be stopping the night and then we’d get a replacement bus for the rest of the trip. The guide was fuming and vented her frustrations to us all and apologised profusely for this terrible happening! The journey really was pretty dreadful but we did pull over to watch another wonderful sunset which was a silver lining.

We got to the campsite late on and got tea sorted quickly so we could all have showers and go to bed.

This tour group is all women apart from Danny and another fellow who’s with his wife (they’re from Switzerland.) Danny seems content enough with this, but it’ll be a hassle for the ladies at service stops etc as they all have to queue for the toilets!

Day 39 - Start of tour numero uno

We were picked up at 05:00 by our tour driver who’d be having the pleasure of our company for the next two days. We left Alice Springs and began our very long trip to the big rock (Ayers Rock/ Uluru) stopping for food along the way.  Before we got to Uluru though we stopped at King’s Canyon (Oz’s answer to the Grand Canyon) where we had the option of two walks – a long trek or a shorter walk; but as the temperature was 45 degrees, in the shade, our guide insisted upon the short one. This was indeed ridiculously hot; the sun beat down on us all and the walk never gave us the mercy of the shade either. Our guide said he felt like it was the hottest and hardest walk here that he’d ever done and he kept telling us to keep drinking water. He also told us that someone on a tour he’d taken out a few days ago had her shoes begin to melt as the heat was almost as bad as today’s! It’s so easy to dehydrate out here and we’re definitely glad we did the shorter walk. We took in some nice views of the Canyon before heading back to the air-conditioned utopia that was our bus and its huge water dispenser!

As we’d done the short walk, our driver told us that we should be able to make it to the rock in time to witness sunset at 18:33. We did make it and the two of us grabbed a couple of beers each and set off, with the others, to go up the sand dunes there for a better view of the sunset. Unfortunately there were lots of clouds so the sun couldn’t light up the rock as it would on a day without them. The sun setting was still nice to watch and we got lots of photos of this and the rock too.

We then went back to our campsite (permanent raised tents) and had a bbq for the 13 of us in the group. There was some good food here and plenty of it as they buy enough for 24 people. We could choose from: steaks, salad etc, camel sausages, and our personal favourites… kangaroo, which was gorgeous; really tender and really tasty. Not many people liked the roo so the two of us polished as much of it off as we could.

Then it was bedtime. As we were in the middle of nowhere and it was a fairly clear night you could see all of the stars and constellations which was really nice to look at; it’s not something you often get to see back home, unless you go camping or somewhere remote.

Day 38 - Prepping for trekking

We gave ourselves a long lie-in today: partly to recover from lots of early mornings, and partly as we knew we’d be up stupidly early tomorrow.

After messing around on the free Wi-Fi for ages we decided to go into town; we needed some supplies as well as a memory card reader for Danny’s camera so we spent a long time wandering around the shops. We got a cheap card reader and food supplies along with: Insect repellent, 2 hats, and a head net for Danny (for stopping flies that are meant to be numerous in central Oz.) Corrie didn’t want one of these nets so let’s hope all the Vegemite she’s been eating repels them!

We had a Subway for lunch and then headed back to the hostel for more lazing around. Later on we had noodles for tea and packed our things to save the hassle of doing it at 04:00 tomorrow!

Day 37 - Flying to Alice Springs

Once again, no lie-in as we had to catch the shuttle bus to the airport for our 11:25 flight to the middle of Oz. Luckily we had a 23kg per person luggage allowance so all the leftover beer and wine could come with us!

The flight was very nice, getting loads of leg room which would’ve been great on the flights to Australia. We also got lunch and drinks so this too was nice.

Wow it’s hot in the middle of this country, being a cosy 40 degrees when we arrived. The only saving grace was that, unlike Cairns, the humidity is very low so we weren’t as sweaty every time we went for a walk. This was good as we had to walk to Woolies in town to get some water etc before going back to the hostel to drink it all!

Later we decided to head in to town again to try a place called Overlanders Steak House (serves crocodile, kangaroo, emu and a like) but we swiftly moved on as soon as we saw their prices! We gave Eagle Boys pizza a go tonight and that was ok, we took the leftovers back to the hostel for midnight snacks too.


There's not much rainfall here either, as the picture of the Todd River below shows:

Day 36 - Lazy day

We both really wanted a lie-in today after the past two days but there was no such luck as we had to return the hire car for 08:00. We did think that we’d go back to bed after doing this but that wasn’t happening either, so we just sorted out a few bits and bats before Corrie got cabin fever! Corrie experiences this on lazy days where about two hours have passed during the day and we have remained in the room.

Corrie’s cure came in the form of sunbathing by the pool, though after a while Danny experienced sunbathing fever – where he’s spent more than two hours in constant, baking sun! He went back to the room to recover and Corrie remained to cook a little more.

When Corrie returned to the room we both went to Woolworths for food; sandwiches were on the menu for tea. After tea we did some more computer stuff then went to sleep.

Day 35 - Valentine's Day road trip

Today started at 08:30 for us as we were way too tired to get up for the scheduled 06:00 departure we’d planned (only so we could watch the sun rise as we drove.)

We fuelled up and made for a place called Palm Cove that someone had said would be a nice place to have a quick drive around. We did just that as there wasn’t much to this place and then moved along the coast to stop two.

We also pulled in at Rex Lookout: a spot alongside the highway offering nice views back down the coast.

Stop three was Port Douglas where we wandered around the town and shops for a bit before spotting signs for another lookout (Flagstaff Hill Lookout.) This offered yet more good views so Corrie was away with her itchy trigger finger once more.

Shortly after we drove to Mossman Gorge where we did a river walk and sat watching people having a morning swim there. We got peckish here and decided to have a crisp sarni each; we were soon getting harassed by a couple of bush turkeys that seemed very put-out when we left just a few crumbs for them to clear up!

A little further up the coast we reached the cable ferry crossing where we bought a return ticket and were safely transported to the other side. Walu Wugirriga Alexandra Range Lookout Point was next which had more nice views to take in, including where Daintree River meets the sea and views from Snapper Island to Port Douglas.

Stop six was Jindalba Boardwalk where Corrie, once again, had a close encounter with nature as she just missed walking straight into a very serious looking fellow’s web on her way to and from the toilet! This was a Nephila Pilipes and we now know that, although as big as a hand and scary looking, they aren’t poisonous… phew! We did the boardwalk here where we also spotted a Boyd’s Forest Dragon clinging onto a tree. Unfortunately for Corrie, who was now a nervous wreck after her close shave, we also saw many more of the large black and orange/ yellow spiders here too!

Stop seven was the Floravilla Ice-cream Factory where we chose to sample just one of their many, no added colours or preservatives etc, flavours of ice-cream. We had the triple chocolate one and this was delicious.

A tactical stop eight was just up the road at the Daintree Ice-cream company. Here we had a four scoop taster selection including: passion fruit, pineapple, black sapote, and wattle seed. The passion fruit and pineapple ones were gorgeous but the other two just reminded us of liqueurs, and not particularly nice ones at that.

Stop nine was, get ready for the wrong choice of spelling thanks to all the conflicting maps and signs, the Marrdja Boardwalk where we saw much more of nature’s fascinating creations. At the end of this walk we looked out onto Noah Creek for a while trying, and failing, to spot crocs…. Probably a good thing though.

We then headed to Dubuji Boarwalk where we saw: yet more spiders and the biggest one of the day, little pigs snuffling around for food, and a few orange legged scrubfowls.

Our final stop was at Cape Tribulation itself where we admired its stunning beach and the waters that were so tempting if it weren’t for the crocs and jellyfish in there! We also strolled down to the lookout onto the beach; Danny had a slight panic as we heard load rustling in the trees and very loud pig squeals which, thankfully just happened to be lots of pigs fighting and not a crocodile chasing after them!

After a great day of sightseeing we made the two and a half hour journey back to get some food and sleep.