Helen and Randall on the road

6am pick up at Alice’s Secret by Katie the guide, and Snooty the ruffty-tuffty high-clearance 4WD truck and trailer:

Then a loooooong drive (660km) to our first camp near Uluru/Ayers Rock, with a morning tea break at a roadhouse where we met two guys doing the journey (they’d come from NSW) on Harleys:

Randall was jealous.

Then we had another stop for gathering firewood. Katie knew where to find some dead dry trees for firewood, and she definitely wanted trees not sticks!

From the firewood stop we could see Mount Conner, or ‘Fooluru’:

Camp was in the Uluru national park, in one of a series of semi-permanent camps with a one-room wooden and canvas enclosure with running water, a  sink and a table inside and outside. One electric light was powered by the truck battery (Randall had to get busy with the insulation tape and crocodile clips). We got lunch – DIY sandwiches – together, and we grabbed our ‘swags’ (canvas bedrolls containing a mattress and pillow) to lay them out by the fireplace, making them up with sheets and pillowcases and stuffing our pillowcases and a blanket in with them:

then hopped back in the truck for the short drive to the Uluru Cultural Centre (the most impressive thing about which was the fantastic wooden benches:

which I covet) and then the rock itself:

Our Leader. I mean, Fearless Leader. No, that’s BELOVED Fearless Leader. Katie.

We decided not to do ‘the climb’,

which is considered – like pretty much everything else in the area for one reason or another – culturally insensitive and frankly looked a bit on the wrong side of the scariness/interesting-ness ratio for my liking, being essentially a straight line up a blank sheet of rock. The photo doesn’t really give the perspective but the squiggly line is the wire you can hang on to on the extra-steep bit.

The other option was the 10km walk right around the base of the rock, with the first part lead by Katie who explained various things about the flora and fauna:

Next it was back to camp and a quick sprint up to the lookout for the sunset, with sparkling wine and cheese & biscuits. How very civilised!:

Dinner was cooked over the fire by the marvellous and-multi talented Katie, and interrupted from time to time by sightings of the resident hopping mice, after which we both managed to have a surprisingly good hot shower in the shared campsite facilities for the area, despite the local wildlife:

We even slept well by the campfire and under the stars (lots of shooting stars), snug in our swags, with apparently no incursions by insects or rodents…

Next morning we were up at 4.30 in time to breakfast and pack before driving to the spot to see sunrise over Uluru:

After which Katie noticed that we had a flat tyre, the changing of which was a bit of a team effort:

Then we headed to Kata Tjuta / The Olgas for a fantastic 3 hour circular hike:

After finishing the walk at 11am (after which it is already too hot to walk if not in the shade) we had a long drive to the next camp near Kings Canyon. Lunch break was at Kings Creek, a working cattle station making extra money from tourism with a campsite, chalets and a shop/pub. The resident emu was quite an attraction during lunch:

We also stopped off at a salt lake:

Then Camp was in the bush with a ‘loo with a view’…flushable but with only 3 walls of the wooden cubicle so you could sit on the loo and contemplate the fabulous vistas (if you could take your mind off the massive spider webs and various rustling noises in the undergrowth), however it was attached to a camp site, fuel station and shop so we had decent shower facilities and even a pool (unheated, although some of our group went for a brief and chilly dip).

Next morning was practically a lie-in as we only had to get up at 5.30 in order to have breakfast, strike camp and get on the road in time to start the hike while it was still cool enough.Today was all about King’s Canyon, and the circular hike started with ‘heart attack hill’, 350 steps up to the top of the ridge.

Felicia (Guy Pearce): “I’ve always wanted to travel to the center of Australia, climb Kings Canyon, as a queen, in a full-length Gaultier sequin, heels and a tiara.”

Bernadette (Terence Stamp): “That’s just what this country needs. A cock, in a frock, on a rock.”

    – Pricilla, Queen of the Desert

For anyone who doesn’t recall, they do in fact do the hike in drag, and to my great delight the narrow v-shaped entrance to the ridge is named ‘Priscilla’s Crevice’ in their honour:

The rest of the hike was incredibly spectacular, and the fabulous Katie gathered us together from time to time to give us info about the various fauna and flora  in the area:

At lunchtime it was time for those of us on the three day trip to head back to Alice Springs, so David the guide came to collect us (Marc, Julia, Eduoard, Celine and us) while the rest stayed on at the camel farm that was the rendezvous point, and where we bizarrely saw the Australian Camel Corps taking their animals out for a spin.

Bo’s Challenge

After a wander around Adelaide to find a decent coffee on a Sunday morning (impossible…everything is shut on Sundays!), we caught the free shuttle from the hostel to Adelaide Parklands Station to catch The Ghan:

We’d splashed out for the Gold Service so we had a private en-suite cabin:

and all meals included, served in the Queen Adelaide restaurant:

after our champagne reception in the ‘Outback Explorer Lounge’ (apparently they are all named after, well, outback explorers). They simply did not stop feeding us, with 3 courses for lunch, dinner, breakfast and lunch on the second day, all prepared fresh on board and served at our white-linen-tablecloth-covered tables. Handily the cheapest wine on the menu was a sparkling, so we made do with that :-).

The views from the train were mostly of the desert and outback:

After lunch on Monday we disembarked at Alice Springs (the train continues to Katherine and Darwin)…

…where we settled into our fantastic hostel (more about this later) then headed into town (it’s SMALL) where we dug into the $10 pitchers of NT draft and later the mixed grill of emu, kangaroo, camel, crocodile and buffalo:

before heading back for an early night in preparation for our 6am pickup the next morning.

Early start…all aboard the Calypso Star at 6.30am for Randall’s long awaited cage diving with Great White Sharks experience:

Two and a half hours out in very lumpy seas (popped my vomiting-at-sea cherry which is impressive given some of the experiences of sailing at school!) we reached the Neptune Islands, a seal breeding colony thus where the Great Whites like to hang out.

After chumming the water the Great Whites started to come and investigate:

Yum. Chum.

Heckling from the cheap seats!

Randall loved it!

Early night tonight as 8 hour drive (at the speed limit as we already have one speeding ticket for a…er…..’substantial’ amount of money…)!

Woke up just in time to catch Natasha squeaking out of the door to get to work, and then packed up the car, dropped it off at the rental office and took a taxi to Flinders St station where after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and general misdirection we found the left luggage (it’s actually the customer information office, for future reference).

Breakfast of Kings (pint of lager and a ham, cheese and mustard toastie) at the Ponyfish Island cafe, a tiny cafe perched on one of the starlings of the footbridge…thanks for the recommendation, Wilson!:

Spotted some black swans and mused on the philosophical implications of this:

…before heading up the Eureka Tower Skydeck on the 88th floor to get a panoramic view of Melbourne…

and said ‘thanks but no thanks’ to ‘The Edge’, a glass drawer that suspends you 3 metres out, high over the city, so you can peer down through the glass floor. Erk.:

After a wander back over the river and through Fed Square:

we hopped on the free tram loop to see a bit of the city then hopped off again near Southern Cross station to collect our train tickets for the next leg of the journey. From there we took another tram to St Kilda where we grabbed a burger:

and just managed to catch the sun setting over the sea:

before perusing the cake shops on Acland Street:

Woke up to rain and wind so promptly went back to sleep again, only to be woken later by the sound and smells of a campfire – hooray for Jason!

Despite the odd shower we managed to have a civilised and leisurely Sunday breakfast:

Camping J&N stylee:

Campground:

Who lives in a house like this?

Back in Melbourne we showered and changed out of our lightly barbecued clothes before heading out into town to meet Karen and Wilson for drinks on the 35th floor of the Sofitel (complete with floor-to-ceiling picture windows in the toilets!) then dinner in the Blue Train on the South Bank, watching the flamethrowers on the riverside and a wander around the huge Crown Casino complex:

Early start today to catch the sunrise over the Twelve Apostles – although the sun doesn’t actually rise over the sea, the light catching the landscape and the limestone cliffs and stacks is quite lovely:

Despite dire warnings (the – probably apocryphal – story is that last time one of the limestone arches collapsed leaving two stacks some tourists were marrooned on the far stack and had to be helicoptered off) we bunked through some safety netting to get to the headland for the best view:

After a while we headed back to pack up our cabin…:

…and head off down the road for breakfast in Warrnambool where we had been told there was a laundrette, stopping on the way to check out one of the remaining arches:

Warrnambool seemed like a bit of a one horse town but after getting very friendly directions we found the laundrette which was handily near a really lovely coffee shop so we had a great brunch reading the newspapers at the huge wooden table while waiting for our laundry:

as well as picking up camping supplies from the Aldi next door.

The drive from Warrnambool to Halls Gap in the Grampians where we were meeting Jason and Natasha was a bit fraught…we planned to fill up on petrol in Warrnambool but forgot. Thinking there would be a petrol station in every town on the way we didn’t really worry about it. This was a mistake. After the third small town with no petrol station and having driven the last 30km with the fuel light on we asked in the General Store in Caramut only to be told that the nearest one was 25km away. Luckily we coasted in on fumes to this rather sweet self-service in Penshurst:

After which it was another hour’s drive through this kind of territory:

before meeting Natasha and Jason in Halls Gap, from where we drove up a dirt and gravel track to the start of the Hollow Mountain hike, which was *very* steep and involved some slightly hairy bouldering at altitude but was utterly spectacular:

After charging down again we had time for the short walk to an Aborigine cave painting site nearby with children’s handprints. The overall impression was that although the local Aborigines maintain the site, no-one really knows what the significance of it is because the oral traditions were lost so long ago.

The drive back on the dirt road was made rather exciting by the sudden appearance of an emu which shot into the road in front of the car to our shock and my delight (I wasn’t entirely convinced that they were actually real animals)…fortunately we didn’t hit it as it was huge and I’m not sure who would have come off worse…

Back at the campsite (thanks for pitching our tent Jason!) we saw some kangaroos hopping around in the headlights of a car while we were building the fire (in a steel drum and concrete fireplace) for campfire dinner that was made especially exciting by the visitation from a huntsman spider.

I first saw the spider as a shadow from the far side of the plastic bag, with the torch shining from behind it, so was convinced that it was at least the size of a dinner place. Fortunately this was not the case…

leisurely cafe breakfast in Melbourne just round the corner from our hostel and from Flinders Street station, watching all the schoochildren crowding into the ‘Little Cupcake’ shop across the street.

Picked up the (hilariously teeny) rental car and after a minor ‘scenic route’ got ourselves onto the highway and thence to the Great Ocean Road “…a 243-kilometre (151 mi) stretch of road along the south-eastern coast of Australia between the Victorian cities of Torquay and Warrnambool. The road was built by returned soldiers between 1919 and 1932, and is the world’s largest war memorial; dedicated to casualties of WWI.” (Thank you Wikipedia)

The GOR is quite quite lovely and has viewpoints all along it like this one:

We stopped off for lunch in the sunshine in Lorne…:

On the way back we called in for lunch with Julie’s family in Springwood:

Bushwalk before lunch out the back of their house.

Family snaps!

Back in Sydney, while Randall was recovering from the effects of the 24-hours-out-of-the-fridge-potato-salad that he had eaten for breakfast, I went out with Aine who was passing through between teaching English in South Korea and working on the Gold Coast. Not much photographic evidence of this sadly, although much wine was consumed in Betty’s (where an aging wanabee-screenwriter tried to pick up Aine) and in ‘The Peel’ at The Slide Cabaret on Oxford Street.

Early start the next morning for a full day train journey to Melbourne!

Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, only 2 hours on the train from Sydney, is a somewhat peculiar place. I imagine that in season when it is buzzing with hikers and tourists it is probably a quaint and slightly bohemian mountain town, but when we arrived and walked down the main street it rather reminded me of Karlskoga. For non ex-Transcom people for whom this means nothing, imagine Twin Peaks without all the fun and interesting stuff.

Still, it’s the starting point for some amazing Blue Mountains hikes and home to the ‘Three Sisters’, some spectacular rock stacks:

The information place was pretty good so we managed to get a hike in along the Prince Henry Cliff Pathway to the Leura Cascades before repairing to Aldi for supplies and our hostel for dinner. The hostel only increased the Twin Peaks ambiance…dark, 1970s retro decor (not the stylish kind of retro), mysteriously opening doors, and swirling mist past the windows….ooOOOOOOOoooooooo!!!

The next morning after making our sandwiches and having breakfast with the Catalan student staying in the hostel we headed out for a long walk, down to the Three Sisters, on the way to which we saw:

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing inherently funny about expired avian life, however after that there was only one way the conversation could go…

We made it down the Giant Stairway,

to the Leura Forest then along the ‘Federal Path’ at the bottom of the valley…

..as far as the ‘Touristy Bit’ where after looking at the fantastic views, the information about the old mining communities, and the old funicular railway that was used by the mine but opened for curious visitors at weekends:

we took ‘The World’s Steepest Funicular Railway’

back up to the visitor’s centre on the cliff path, where we ate our sandwiches while watching coachloads of Japanese tourists photographing each other doing culturally insensitive things with the bronze sculptures of Aborigine tribespeople.

Sunday was a wandering around Sydney day, checking out the architcture and bizarre signage:

if you pay peanuts?

Answers to Michael. Really?

Lovely Metro apartment building next to our Hostel, and alightly less lovely but entirely adequate backpacker hostel where we spent Thursday to Monday::

Where are we..?

Dandelion fountain in the square next door:

Emu Oil. For oiling your emu: