The Desert

One of the last parts of our trip in Australia was a drive through the outback to Uluru. Our journey started from Port Augusta, this is a little town in South Australia. We left the main high street of this town and started driving along Stuart Highway which is the main/ only road that links the south of Australia with the north. We had only been driving on Stuart Highway for 10 minutes and we had already lost phone signal, this was when we realised just how isolated we were going to be on this trip. 

The desert was far more beautiful than we ever expected, I think this was helped by the time of year that we travelled. We expected to see just a whole lot of red but instead there was a lot of greenery and we saw Kangaroo’s, Dingo, Wild Cattle, Eagles, Vulture’s and Emu. We had the shock of our lives when one giant kangaroo decide to bounce over the road right in front of our van.  When we say giant we mean giant, this kangaroo was huge, thankfully Jonny has seen it coming (it was so big it was hard to miss) and slowed the van in time. He was about 7 feet tall, bigger than our van and managed to jump a fence which was maybe 5 foot high. After this near miss one of us would always have an eye out for any suicidal wildlife that felt like crossing in front of us.

Our first and only stop on route to the centre of the desert was a town called Coober Pedy. This was a special little town known as the Opal mining capital of the world with a population of about 4,000 people of which 80% live under ground. Temperatures have been known to reach 60 degrees in the summer which is why people started to live underground as the temperature below always remains between 25 and 28 degrees. We went to see an underground home and were really surprised at how spacious it felt, we also visited a charming underground church. At the campsite where we stayed they offered underground camping and a tour of an Opal mine, we took part in the tour and loved it. It was fascinating to hear about the methods used and developed, Jonny had a go at using the copper sticks to locate where the Opal was within the cave.

We split our time between Kings Canyon and Ayres Rock at Uluru. Kings Canyon involved a crazy steep climb up to the top of the Canyon, it was so high and steep we didn’t stop to look down until we got to the top. The view at the top made the climb so worthwhile, we wondered around the rim of canyon seeing the most incredible sights all across the deserts. 

Ayres Rock was just as amazing; we first visited the centre which explained all the spiritual belief’s that the Aboriginals have. We learnt that they believe a lot of spirits live around Ayres rock and this is shown with large portions of the rock not being allowed to be photographed. Once we had finished at the centre we went for a walk around the base of the rock. The rocks base is a 10km walk, and gives you a good view of the rock form all sides. Aboriginals strongly believe that because the rock is so spiritual that it should not be walked on. This is clearly mentioned several times to all people visiting, yet we were shocked to see the large amount of people that felt the need to walk upon the rock. After walking around the rock all morning we went back to the campsite to get a few hours of shade before heading back into the national park to watch the sun set. Watching the sun set was an experience we will never forget. The rock really changes colour from a bright orange, to red, purple and brown. All night we had taken photos of the rock without any problems. On our way home we saw a lovely image of the rock and decided to pull over to take a photo. We were shocked to see that our photo we had taken was covered in orbs all over the rock. Spooky.

The following day we decided we would head to the other large rock formation in the national park, The Olgas. Now the Olgas are not that well known, but both of us feel that they are more impressive than Ayres Rock. They can only be described as the most gigantic (mountain size) boulders in the middle of nowhere. We wanted to do a walk all over them but sadly there was a fire in the local area that was out of control and sadly the path had been closed. In the evening we went to another sunset point which allows you to see the sun set behind the rock. This was good but not as good as the previous night.

On our final day we had to get up and leave early. We really wanted to see the sun rise over the rock so we were up super early to see this. We were expecting to see something magical but sadly the weather was not on our side and the rock just entered daylight without changing colour. It was a shame and nothing special but at least we can say we have done it.