THE ROCK

So, we left Melbourne at 6am on a flight via Sydney to Ayers Rock Resort. Here, after Quantas decided to lose my roll mat and thermarest, we arrived baking hot at the hostel rendez-vous point ready to meet our group. At midday, Dom our tour guide appeared, sporting a Mexican style moustache for 'Mouvember', prostate cancer awareness month, and we got on our jeep bus with the rest of the group.

We had great European representation travelling around the aboriginal outback, 3 French, 4 Italian, 2 German, 2 Swedes, 4 Brits (including us) and 2 Aussies. All good, great mixture of translations going on the whole time, loved it. The first day we had lunch and then headed to Uluru or as it should properly be known The Rock. We spent an hour in the cultural centre reading about Arangu culture and the thoughts and history behind the Rock and then we did an hour and a half tour where Dom explained different spiritual sites around the base. We decided not to walk up it because a) it's offensive to their aboriginal culture, b) it was shut off because of the 38 degrees temperature and winds and c) 35 people have died doing it and the sheer sandstone rock face either side of it with a feeble looking chain didn't appeal.

We settled for the 9km walk around the base which was stunning and then we headed off for dinner and sunset over The Rock. Beautiful, it didn't glow in quite the right way because it was cloudy but it was great nonetheless especially with a cold beer. We then headed to camp, had some more beers and got in our swags to sleep under the stars.

The next day at 4.30am we got up to catch the sunrish over the Rock after a hot night and fear of scorpions, dingos and other such nasties getting in my Swag. After The Rock we headed off to Kata Tjuta or the Olgas, another set of red sandstone rocks and did a 3 hour walk up and around them, really beautiful and really hot, this lesser known (at least for me) natural beauty was really awesome. That afternoon we looked for witchety grubs, had lunch in the bush, got some fire wood and then hit the pool at the next campsite. Here one of our Italian members of the group decided to start up a water gymnastic routine for our entire group, we didn't look stupid really in front of all the other happy campers. Hilarious. That night we cooked up some food on a big open fire, Em and I were in charge of Rice, washing up and generally making everyone else laugh as we squealed at the heat of the open fire. We hit the sack 4 hours before we were due to get up again after some more beers and a bit of guitar playing and campfire singing. Beautiful Mate.

The next day we walked Kings Canyon, a little bit like I imagine the Grand Canyon to be but an aussie version and probably smaller but great nonetheless. We had a good swim in a natural pool in the valley tucked into the canyon getting out promptly when we saw some unidentified animal swimming about under the water...

After lunch we had a long drive to Alice Springs where I visited the opticians due to 1.5 inflamed puffy eyes because of some mossie allergic reaction, looked like I'd been punched and then we headed out for a buffet dinner, pub quiz and yes some more beers particularly after our team won the quiz, get in. Great end to a great tour. We didn't actually didn't actually drink all that much beer though it sounds like it!

The next day we departed on the plane to Cairns and arrived in the evening at Gilligans hostel (not to be recommended, big monolithic, badly managed unfriendly resort). Sorted our stuff out and got ready for our open water dive course the next day...