Perth

I got into Perth from Yulara with just enough time (5 hours) to grab a shuttle to the city and check it out.. It was great.. the people there are very freindly and it's a big, modern clean place.. I liked it the best next to Syndey I think... a welcome change from Alice and Adelaide ( a little too rough for my tastes...)

I took a walk around town... there was a cool statue of roos with a bigger statue containing all of the important metal ores in the area (the mining of which had really built the city)



Then I walked up a hill and got a great view of the city... it was a hard walk so I had to take in a bit of beer (or bitter as they call it here... yuck.. i have found least bitter one I can ;0)



It was a nice sunny day, I ended it with another beer (yes I've been drinking a few of those here) at the Brass Monkey and then got out to the airport to head up to Phuket!!!

Uluru

EARLY the next morning (well at least I got 4 hours of sleep) I got on board a tour bus and headed down the highway toward Uluru...

Not too much to see along the way (although I still found myself fascintated by the red sands of the outback.. in between taking 15 min catnaps...). We stopped off a camel farm (used for racing actually) so I could see what I'd eaten the night before ;) I also a dingo up close (which looked like the nicest house dog you could imagine... pretty ferocious in the wild though).... and some wild horses along with way (they call them Brommies out here)....

We got into Yulara (next to Uluru - Ayer's Rock) just in time for me to get down there and take a hike around the base of it (the Aboriginals had closed the climb to the top down to the heat... it was only in the 90's... I think they take whatever excuse they can to keep people off of it... they see it as a sacred place... which is also why there are signs all over the place saying not to take pictures of the rock - hopefully I didn't steal any soles or whatever from the rock, but I did take a few pics ;0)

There were some very cool formation in the rock as you got closer to it. Including some that looked like very familiar objects...

It's funny - the aboriginals had all these really intricate stories about the creation (or dreamtime as they call it) incorporating spirits of animals (which are really people) into the rock formations around them... such as the giant bad tempered lizard Lungkata below).... but they seemed to totally ignore what I think is obviously a huge whale... maybe they hadn't made it down to the ocean by then...

There are very few rock paintings by the aboriginals as they used materials that were easily washed away by rain and really depended on oral storytelling more than pictoral ones anwyay... but there were a few around...

I also found some "real" monsters along they way... that is one NASTY bug !!!

I finally found myself in an ancient waterhole that had been used for thousands of years by animals and aboriginals alike for thousands of years and had a quick nap before hooking up with the tour bus for a trip back out to watch the susnet on Uluru... it was MAGNIFICANT ;0)

Then we headed back to the Outback Pioneer Hostel and I took a dip in the pool and had some kangaroo for dinner - the backpackers were all singing drunken country songs at the bar so I made it an early night...

Alice Springs

I got into Alice Springs in the center of the outback just in time to grab a rental car and head out for a small drive into the mountains of the outback... I first went to the Ormistead Gap... it was pretty cool.. but the best thing about it was a huge water whole surrounded by rocks with crazy lizards all over them... when you get to close they stand up on two legs and run away upright, it was really funny to watch (I have a video for later viewing ;0):

Then I continued on down the road ) - I didn't have enought time to get out to King's Canyon but it looked great from the distance...

I wasn't too bothered though as I'd seen a lot of the outback at this point.. I was however pretty hot.. so I stopped off at a large water hole (tried to tell myself that crocodiles weren't found this far into the outback) and took a very refreshing swim in it ;0)

After my cool down (and a nice big ol' Magnum Ice Cream from the gas station) I headed back towards the "city" stopping off at the Ocre Pits where aboriginals used to get different colored clays to paints their bodies with:

And then I ended the day at Simmon's gap and was lucky enough to find some rare Black Footed Rock Wallabies drinking from the water hole there... they were very skitish... fun to watch!

After the sunset (which mean I had to drive VERY slowly so not to hit all the marsupials around) I went back to Alice Springs, took a shower and hooked up with my Irish friend and a few other girs @ a crazy bar where I ate Camel pie (really... it tasted a lot like Venison) and then got a little too drunk and ended up dancing with them to bad 80's songs ;0)

Alice Springs (or The Alice) was fun and it was great to see an "outback town"... but the aboriginals who make up 20% of the popoulation are pretty scary there.... it's mostly the alcoholics who have been kicked out there tribes and have nowhere else to go.. which means lots of desperate, not to happy, drunk people lurking around in the dark... I drove all the girls home in my rental car then ran from the droppoff back to my hotel... fun to visit but more for the country around it...

Adelaide

I stayed 2 nights in Adelaide... I don't know if it is because I was out on a beautiful island full of exotic animals, basking in the ocean & sunlight the day before or what, but I just wasn't into it the first night... I went straight to bed.

The next day, however was a different story ;0) I walked around the town taking in the small, dustry frontier town scenery... with lots of big ol' victorian buildings to break it up... and found my way to the royal botanical gardens - here I discovered they had a planting of the Wollemi Pine ( a tree only discovered a few years ago in the blue mountains and thought to be extinct from the time of the dinsosaurs... pretty cool). I also also checked out the rainforest exhibit, which is one of the coolest (and hottest, humid places I've ever been) - this pic was taken from the biggest rose garden I've ever seen ;0)

I also stopped off at the National Wine Gallery and learned about the differnt varieties of grapes, then did a small wine tasting with some backpakers from Israel and Tokyo... it was fun. Of course by this point my appetite was up... so I had a nice oyster lunch...

Eventually, I made my way to the South Australia museum and after having some coffee in a cafe surrounded by massive whale skeletons... had just enough time to check out the exhibit on Abiriginols and their way of life.. it was great exhibit (lots of video documentary from the turn of the century) - not one word of all the horrible things that happened to them with colonisation which I found a little odd. This is a pic of a human skull that the aborignals used to use as a way to drink water... damn)....

I had a nap and then I went out to a big dance and had fun until 7 or so in the morning... it was great! Some of the 'shows" they put on even shocked me a bit... ;0)

The Ghan

After 2 hours of sleep (:0) I took the Ghan Train from Adelaide up to Alice Springs (in the very center of Australia - and the very center of the outback). It's called the Ghan in recognition of the Afhanistan guys who came over on their camels and helped chart the early tracks through the center of Australia... It was different from the Indian Pacifc in that when I went to sleep looking at flat red desert puncuated by arid trees and sagebrush looking bushes, that's exactly what I woke up to...

but let me tell you, it was a great sight to watch go by out the windows. The only thing that wasn't as good was the lack of animal life... didnt' see see any kangaroos or emus this time (I was really looking for dingos anyway ;0). But the red sand and dried up salt lakes were great to see.

I made some buddies from Ireland and we looked for animals together (we also all had the same guide book which was funny):

One of them saw a kangaroo early in the moring, but the only thing I saw were these "camel melons" growing in clumps by the tracks... they look very succulant (and therefore very out of place in the outback) but I learned later that they were brought over in the saddles of the Ghan camel guys and taste REALLY bad.. so bad that no animal in australia will touch them.. at least that keeps them from spreading...

I was also able to see lots of the Spinifex grass (which grows in round clumps and is essentially made of silicon... that means glass). This stuff was very hard on the early exploreres and their horses... I tried touching it and was instantly stabbed by it with a sliver of glass... ouch that stuff is nasty...

I think the coolest thing on the trip were all of the dust devils we saw....

And the world's oldest river (the course has remained unchanged for millions of years.. you can see why it really hasn't changed much from this pic ;0)

Indian Pacific to KI & Adelaide

I've been in numerous taxis, on a train, on numerous bus rides, on a ferry and driven all in the last 3 days... phew... it was worth it though - I've seen so many great things!

I started my journey from Sydney to Kangaroo Island on the Indian Pacific railways. I purposefully took the train so I'd see the country and boy did I. The trip started out through the beautiful Blue Mountains and then wound down into verdant green hills, broken up with farmhouses, sheep & cows... I sat and talked with a Dutch couple (who are going around the world looking for shipwrecks) and watched out the windows for Kangaroos (we saw lots! - couldn't get any good pics though).



I went to sleep that night and when I woke up I was in the brilliant red desert of the Outback - it was great! To be honest, my first thought was that if Scotty transported me there I wouldn't be able to tell if I was in OZ or in Wyoming - until, that is, you spot kangaroo, emu, wedge-tailed eagles (which have a huge wingspan, can't really tell in the pic) and flocks of brillant white cokatoos with bright red bellies instead of the normal antelope ;0)





We stopped off that morning in an old mining town called Broken Hill and I had time for a quick 1 hour tour - it was what you'd expect from a small frontier town (touristy now of course). We also toured the Royal Flying Doctors headquarters for the area - they actually fly doctors out to people all over outback and its a free service... don't tell Hillary.

This all kept me very enteratained until I pulled into the Adelaide train station and jumped on a bus to get me down to Kangaroo Island.

I got there just in time for sunset. I made freinds with the car rental guy and we sat and had a beer watching it - he gave me some great pointers on where to go (early) the next morning - then (in exchange for a ride to the airport in the morning) he took me on a nocturnal tour of the area looking for penguins, possums and lots of wallabies (he sidelights as a tour guide) - it was fantastic ;0)

My first port of call the next day was Seal Bay - the tour guide took us right down onto the beach among them! They actually aren't seals, but Australian Sealions (this is because they have 4 feet, unlike seals which only have 2 and 2 flippers). It was great to watch and learn about them - the little pups were very fun to watch. There was an awful lot of fighting going on between the "teenage boys" in the group though and they have BIG teeth ;0)

After the seals I had lunch (a great fish sandwich recommended by my friend) and went to a secluded beach to eat it with a huge beer. The water was the clearest blue (azure I think ;0) I've ever seen and it was warm enough for nice long swims... although I have to admit I never went in past my knees and dunked down (way too many stories at this point about sharks and crocadiles on deserted beaches) I kept my eyes on the water at all times ;0) [at least Sealy the Dead Seal wasn't around this time] - there were also some really neat rock formation @ one end of the beach with some cool looking birds hanging out on them.

I stopped off @ Litte Sahara and played in the huge sand dunes and a Koala Sanctuary - this Guano scared the hell out of me when I was walking around looking at things like the termite mound...

Then I headed down the coast & saw Admiral's Arch, which is fantastic enough on it's own, but just happens to also have a colony of Australian Fur Seals that call it home! They were fun to watch, but and I spent a little too much time there (I didn't get to the platypus ponds I meant to stop by on my way back) - see if you can spot the seals in the pic... there were LOTS more of them on the other side of the arch.

Just around the bend are the Remarkable Rocks - these are huge boulders left over on top of a magma bubble. Really neat to walk around in...

It was a long drive back and then (after a quick beer with my friend) a ferry ride back and a longer bus ride to Adelaide (I was glad to get here - I was so tired that I went straight to bed - on a FRIDAY night!!!). I did see some dolphins playing in the ferry's wake though...