Alice Springs to Adelaide

1. 2. 3. Mount Ohlssen-Bagge
4. Emu, camel, kangaroo
5. biking down the bumpiest road ever...
6. Coober Pedy- discarded sand piles after taking out the opals
7. our hostel- underground
8. actual home underground
9. a hilltop view of Coober Pedy, note the stacks in the front, these are so people have clean air to breath (air stacks!)
10. the view from the bus window- for days....
11.12.13. Kata Tjuta
14. me in my swag outside!
15. -20. Uluru and its different angles.. no two views are the same...
21. sign of where were were heading
22.23.24. King's Canyon
25. King's Canyon (Priscilla's Gap, from Priscilla of the Desert!)


Moving on! So joining another tour with different people, I am off on a 6 day journey from Alice Springs to Adelaide via King's Canyon, Uluru, and Kata Tjuta. Very Pretty sites.

Our early departure this morning had us on the bus for 6 hours before our lunch stop at King's Canyon. Here we did a 2 1/2 hour hike over some loose rocks and a little rough terrain, but the resulting views were spectacular! Many refer to King's Canyon as Australia's Grand Canyon. It really was beautiful. The top of the rocks are 270 meters above the canyon floor and the views of sheer rock cliffs were magnificent. Hidden in the canyon is a permanent water hole they refer to as the Garden of Eden ( an oasis in the desert!). There are amazing eucalyptus (or gum) trees in Australia and so far they can be found everywhere.. I wonder if I could get one to grow in my yard? I tripped on the top and popped my ankle, so I had to take it slow and be thankful i wasn't near the edge when it happened.. I recovered, so all is well now.

Back on the bus for another 4 hours we stopped and had a great view of a tabletop formation on Mount Connor, like the plateau top in Gros Mourne national Park in NFLD! There are also plenty of old salt lake beds here, dried up and looking like the Salt Plains at home. Our last stop for drinks was at a cattle station which supposedly is 100 million acres large. They round p their cattle in an quiet an unobtrusive way. they can turn on and off the waterholes and herd the cattle that way by forcing them to move in the direction of the pick-up spots. kind of neat!

Supposedly they're are 7 million camels roaming the wilds of the outback, but I never saw any. They were brought over by the Afghanistan workers when building the rail line and when it was done, they were to be destroyed but the workers let them go free and now they are taking over more and more space.

Early the next morning we rose to watch sunrise at Uluru(Ayer's Rock)... what a spectacular sight.. it really is a spectacular piece of rock that got better as more light shone on it. We did the 9.5 km walk around the base and saw many of the nooks and crannies up close, though many of the really cool parts were sacred and could not be photographed (without repercussions that is). As well the Aboriginals do not want it to be climbed anymore, but it was to windy to do so anyway (and people have dies, so i am not sure I would have). The Uluru rises 348 meters from the desert floor and again they think that 2/3 of it is actually below the surface. (one aboriginal guy I sat with at a bus stop think that this is actually Noah's Arc.. but who knows he'd had a bottle of wine or two!)

Then again even before lunch we did a 5.4 km hike in Kata Tjuta (the Olga's). In this area are 36 separate domes in a cluster. The highest one rises 200 meters above Uluru's highest point! It was a pretty neat trek between the rocks and then seeing a "garden" in the middle of it all. Very pretty! That night we watched sun set over the two rock formations from our campsite (well a short walk away), and slept outside in a swag.. it was a little chilly on the face but actually cozy.

Off we headed to Coober Pedy! On the way we crossed over the border from the Northern territory to South Australia and into the arid climate of the "real" outback!. Coober Pedy is an opal mining town. 95% of the world's opals come from Coober Pedy and 80% of those come from Coober Pedy! the darker the opal the harder to find and therefore the more expensive. It gets so hot here (50+ degrees) that 75% of the population actually live underground and work underground where the temperature stays a constant 22-25 degrees. Andrea, Kerstin, Kayla Wez, and I went noodling for opals, but didn't find any, darn.. Coober Pedy is supposedly the closest place on earth to what the moon surface would look like and many movies were made her, including Mad Max and Pitch Black.

Our final three day stretch to Adelaide had us on the bus for long hours, separated with hikes, and stops for food and pee breaks. We did a hike at Wilpena Pound (which looks like a huge crater hit it, but was formed by the moving of the tectonic plates, again!) to the Ohlssen-Bagge mountain. It was a tough hike, but well worth the view at the top. The hostels on this stretch have been very nice and haven't seen many bugs! yippee! We had camel sausage, ground emu and kangaroo streak for supper one night. All were pretty tasty. We stopped and saw some more Rock are paintings, but they weren't as nice as the ones in Kakadu. And our final stop was for more wine tasting in the Clare Valley.