The Red Centre

It's quite a sight to see the landscape change from green rainforests to the red/orange/brown colors of Central Australia. After three hours in the air, I'd made it to the Red Centre at last, home to Australia's most famous icon: Uluru.

For a desert it was surprisingly cold. Close to freezing point at night, and only 15 degrees at daytime; quite a change from Tropical North Queensland... I had to find my winter jacket from the bottom of my backpack again. Brrr...

To visit the well-known monolith properly, we embarked on a three-day tour, during which we covered about 1500 km, and visited Uluru, Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon. At night, we slept in so-called 'swags', a typically Australian creation for the outback, which is basically a tent/bivvy bag with a mattress sown into it. Add a sleeping bag, and voila, the desert colds can't harm you for a bit while you can still marvel at the stars.

Finally seeing Uluru was amazing. The rock is absolutely huge, and its brown/orange colors turn bright red at sunrise and sunset. So beautiful! It's most certainly one of the highlights of my travels in Australia.

Uluru is situated in a National Park, which also holds Kata Tjuta, big dome-shaped rock formations. These were also quite a sight, just rising up out of the flat flat desert.

The entire national park is owned by the Aboriginals, but is being leased to the Australian government. The Aboriginal community still lives traditionally in this area though, and Uluru is a very sacred place to them. As rituals still take place, there are several sections around the rock where photographing is not permitted.

After having spent 2 days in the National Park, we headed towards Kings Canyon and did a beautiful hike. After returning to Alice Springs, Ramona's time to leave this country was drawing near so she made her way back to Melbourne, and I am now travelling by myself again.

Since yesterday evening I am in Adelaide. I travelled from Alice Springs in a minivan, a trip that took two full days. We did make a few quick stops though, and spent the night in Coober Pedy, Australia's opal mining city. Because of the extreme temperatures over there in the summer, about 70% of its inhabitants lives in underground houses/caves, carved out in the hills, because the temperature there is constant year-round. A funny place.

The distance we covered in those days was another 1500 kilometers, and during this trip you really realize how immense Australia is, and how much emptiness it contains. Apart from Coober Pedy, you'll see only a few gas stations, some wild sheep and camels, and a couple of roadkill kangaroos. For the rest there is just the road, with very few cars on it, and endless surroundings of brown/red earth with desert bush. It's absolutely the middle of nowhere, you can't even listen to the radio because there is no signal! What a country...

Adelaide is a nice little city. I'm just kicking back here for a while, visiting some of the free museums and such, and the hostel where I'm staying at is very relaxed. I'll head back to Sydney on the 25th by the Indian-Pacific railway.

I can't believe I'm leaving this continent in 9 days!