Blue mountaineers

After several boring days driving and some mini mutinies (after the tour leader promising things then refusing to fulfil these) we arrived just short of Sydney.

Set on a lakeside, we camped in the cool for once which was lovely. As it one of our last nights all together, we took it in turns to play some favourite songs and had a bit of a chat and chill out. To everyone else's frustration, it meant I could play Rend Collective and Hillsong and there was nothing anyone could do about it!

But the real reason we were camping around there wasn't because of the party but as a base for heading into the blue mountains! Apparently the blue mountains look blue because of how the light hits eucalyptus vapour in the air so creates a blueish haze. It was properly beautiful though!

We went walking among the gum trees and to some cascades. Other than the scenery, there was the world steepest railway set at 52 degrees but you could adjust the chairs to tip you forward to 64 degrees! Very exciting! There was also a glass bottomed cable car which, as it glided hundreds of metres above the floor, made your stomach squirm a little!

But here are some photos but because of the haze, like many other places we have visited already, they don't do any justice to the real view.

Sydney awaits!

Shoo fly, don't bother me!

After the highlights of Alice Springs and Uluru, central outback Australia doesn't have huge amounts to offer other than flies and amazing sunsets!

No one that has been to Australia has ever really mentioned the flies. There are bajillions of them and as soon as you head outside, you are swarmed. No word of a lie, there are normally about 20 of them at any one time constantly barraging your eyes, nostrils, mouth or ears. The only respite you get is when the sun goes down. This is another reason why the sunsets were so good! Each night, the sky burns red for several glorious minutes!

The reason I am waffling rubbish is that these few days were filled with lots of driving with lots of flat landscape! We only had a couple of stops really! One was a place called Coober Pedy, the home of opal mining in Australia. While the other, was a fleeting visit to a town called Broken Hill which rather poetically describes a town that saw a gold rush many years ago! Oh and there was a salt lake.

In Coober Pedy it is so hot that everyone lives underground. The day we were there it hit 46 degrees! Most of the other days we were travelling through the outback it was low 40s but 46 was the hottest that we know of. Which is crazy considering its December and there are Christmas songs on the radio!

In Coober Pedy, we visited old opal mines, went noodling (looking for our own opals!), to an underground house, cinema and church. Literally everything is underground in old converted mines!

Another great thing about this place was that when we went shopping (as we were on cook group), steak was then same price as chicken so we had good quality steak as for dinner! Delicious!

We also went to a kangaroo orphanage but that didn't make us feel guilty enough not to have kangaroo sausages! All the orphans from road kills are collected up and raised before getting released to the wild!

That's another thing. There is huge amounts of road kill out here. Lining the roads you will very regularly see wallabies, kangaroos, emus, goats and cows decapitated and getting eaten from the inside out by crows and wedge tail eagles!

Other than roadkill, the entertainment on the drive is limited to seeing a hill, turning left and crossing to the other side of the railway tracks. It's a long, long drive to Sydney!

A red heart?

After a brief encounter with Alice Springs, Steve, Renée, Gill and I hired a car and headed south. To cut a long story short, the camper van continued to head south to Adelaide and officially left the trip but we wanted to continue so needed to get back to Alice Springs! Right, so after a glancing blow with a shopping trolley and driving 450 kms south, we arrived just in time to see the sun setting over the largest monolith in the world, Uluru!

As the sun hit the side of the rock, it glowed a magnificent orange and gold as the sky changed colours. It looked stunning, definitely worth the wait!

That night we camped within minutes of this natural wonder, pretty cool! The next day though, we raced to get to the vantage spot to see the sun rise over the Olga's. The Olga's are similar to Uluru but they consist of many rocks, gorges and valleys.

We did a couple of amazing hikes through these and were massively surprised how green everything was. We were told that this was a red Barron desert but was actually green and luscious with a couple of red rocks!

In all the other countries we have visited, we have tried to embrace the local culture so to keep our culture levels up we were to the Aborigine centre and boomerang throwing! We even made it return! Not entirely accurately but it came back!! All very exciting!

Our next stop was a place called King's Canyon about 300 kms away. The sunset was surprisingly a bit of a disappointment. The highlight was a 7 or 8 year old girl who exclaimed how bored she was at watching a rock and also managed to lock herself, with the keys, inside the car and set off the alarm while her despairing father looked on helpless!

So after a delicious meal, we went for a swim under the stars! Our new campsite had a pool which we made great use of! It just felt nice to have a bit of a soak to get rid of some ingrained red dust!

The next morning was pretty good though! After a bit of unplanned off roading, we got back to the Kings Canyon for sunrise and did a walk around the canyons rim. It was spectacular and the photos do not do any justice for it.

We did however, manage to see a huge amount in a few days but had to go back to Alice to meet back up with the rest of the group! This was only a "little detour" but was nearly 1500 kms. Australia is a really massive country!