If I were a journalist

From Perth I made my way to Adelaide for a quick stop over. Arriving just past 7am, I headed straight for my hostel and let myself into the hostel, to make a cup of tea. By 9am I had booked my flights to the USA and home to the UK - exciting stuff. 

Then it was time for exploring. Priority was breakfast from the central markets. Oh how I wish every home had one of these markets on its doorstep. I swear I would never step foot in a takeaway again. Or at least not very often..

The abundance of fresh food and produce was awesome, and so reasonably priced. It is definitely a massive winner of brownie points and sends Adelaide’s “cool rating” sky high in my opinion. 

Naturally I had to fix myself a little mini picnic. 

Aside from my eating, I took a wander around the South Australia Gallery which basically just annoyed me because the staff was snobby and useless, and the art was displayed badly. They had tried to think of themselves as the Lourve (just because the design of the building is similar) and hung paintings high on the walls. But it simply did not work and did a total disservice to the artists. 

By far the biggest annoyance was the fact the staff were all made to wear uniform suits. This must be the biggest contradiction in art history. How can one be expected to feel like they are in a house of expression when the staff themselves are not allowed to express themselves? It is downright depressing and stupid. The collection wasn’t actually bad, just everything else about the gallery was plain wrong. 

Thankfully the South Australia Museum made up a little for my previous experience. The (very much alive) long necked turtles made up for most misgivings and the staff seemed to have a percentage of humanity, in comparison to next doors gallery. 

I topped my day off with a tram ride to Glenelg, with a walk around the beach.

Then spent my evening talking to a lovely Chilean girl (Carolina) who was the only other inhabitant in our 8 bed dorm. Kudos to Hostel 109 on Carrington Street in Adelaide, for being my favourite hostel so far. Run by the owners, super clean, excellent facilities, quiet but near town, and generally awesome. All for only $23 a night! Winner. 

Another day, another train..

A mere 24 hours this time, from Adelaide to Alice Springs, and almost all of it whirled away talking to fellow passengers. Aside from the tedious hour we wasted just outside of Alice Springs, where we had to wait for the other Ghan to depart so we could arrive. It was stinking hot when we got into the station. Adelaide was a temperate 20 or so celsius and Alice was a comparably shocking 26c. 

I headed to my hostel, managing to cadge yet another free lift, this time from a hostel shuttle that wasn’t my hostel. My abode for all of one night would be the Haven. Tidy enough but a little shabby and a definite downgrade from the glorious Hostel 109. I met a super German girl. Now, let me tell you there are a lot of Germans traveling in Australia. So much so I think there may be more here than in Germany.. But seriously, it’s practically an epidemic. This lady however was really not very German and seemed almost as disgruntled by the amount of Germans roaming around as I was! 

She offered to take me into town for a wander, so wander we did, mainly in search of a bit of Wifi. 24 hours on a train can make one feel starved of social media. One Big Mac later, we departed and I climbed Anzac Hill in the afternoon soon (sensible), then wandered through the evening markets. It is inadvisable to walk around Alice Springs after dark, by yourself, so I got in before night fell and was happy I had a full belly of grotesque McDonalds to satisfy me. 

The next morning I was up at the crack of dawn (no, really!) for my Adventure Tours tour I had booked. Really I had no idea what to expect as I booked it on the recommendation of a friend of a friend. I rocked up at 6:10am, after managing to shovel 2 (free) pieces of toast and marmalade down my gullet and half a cup of tea.

Here a met another German girl, Svenja, traveling by herself. So we naturally paired up to fight spiders and other horrors that may lurk in the bush. It was a dozy drive to the camp offices, so we could fully check in, buy a torch, make sure we were all present and correct, etc. Then finally we were on our way! 

Most of the morning passed in a blur, I know there wasn’t as much sleeping as I hoped, a baby camel visit..

..and a very important second breakfast (bacon and egg bap). I believe I nearly got lost in the outback when we stopped to collect firewood as amazingly you cannot hear the hum of a bus when you’re behind a load of bushes and it really does all look the same. I felt like Crocodile Dundee. 

Finally we got to our camp site in Yulara - the town local to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park (e.g. the place where the big rock is). We made sandwiches for lunch and then embarked on a hike through Kata Tjuta. My non-hiking shoes served me in good stead again and left me on my arse after sliding on a bit of loose gravel.

Sadly only a very mildly grazed elbow to show for it that stopped bleeding after all of 2 seconds. No first aid for me. I think our tour leader, David, was mildly concerned I’d need to be air lifted out, or something equally as horrifying, as he watched me gracefully fall to the ground from behind. But none such luck. 

Kata Tjuta was impressive, lots of big red rocks and some fun steep bits. I am not sure why no one ever talks about Kata Tjuta like they talk about Uluru because it is impressive still. But there you go. I was suitably sweaty by the end. 

Next we dashed over to Uluru for sunset. We had only caught a few glimpses of Uluru before and to see it properly in all of its glory was downright impressive. 

It might just be a rock, but it isn’t. It is definitely a lot more than that. 

Our group ambled away from the roving crowds who all stopped besides their tour buses in their hundreds, clutching snacks and champagne. How very sheeplike as usual. So I got a nice quiet spot to watch the rock change colour and an obligatory tourist picture where I do look rather happy. Thanks to Svenja awesome photography skills and managing to make me laugh. No champagne for us, just the pretty rock, which was quite enough, thank you. 

Back to camp we went after our exhilarating rock colour changing experience. 

I was starving by this stage and knackered, so I pulled up a pew and vowed to wash up instead. Dinner consisted of an Aussie BBQ; camel sausages, kangaroo and beef, with coleslaw and potato bake. It turned out really rather yummy, the coleslaw was a particular winner, as was the kangaroo though I am pretty certain the chefs (read; fellow tour goers) mixed up the beef and kangaroo so in fact my yummy kangaroo was actually yummy beef. But never mind, it was all good. 

Somehow or another we all managed to stay up until gone 10PM, including a bit of a sing song with a ukulele and half sized guitar, around the camp fire. Though the real highlight was a fellow tour guide, Rael, joining us for a didgeridoo demonstration. He has been playing since he was 6 and quite frankly I can’t quite describe how phenomenal his playing was. I was speechless, and we all know that doesn’t happen very often. 

Finally we crawled into our swags (read: canvas things that are like a glorified sleeping bag that you sleep in under the stars). I was semi convinced I was going to wake up with some gigantic animal or insect crawling across my face or a snake nestled into my swag, but no such event occurred, thankfully. 

I rolled (quite literally) out of bed at 5AM - the stars were still out - to wash myself of all the orangey dust I had acquired yesterday. I realised the fundamental thing that was missing from my camping experience, and a fundamental part of UK camping, was feeling damp. Central Australia is so dry I don’t think the word “damp” exists in their vocabulary. 

We gobbled some breakfast and left camp by 6AM for sunrise at Uluru. David played an excellent “sunrise” playlist (and admittedly an excellent “sunset” playlist the previous day), as we drove into view of Uluru. Super. I have definitely never been so excited about a rock before. 

Everyone in our tour opted to do the base walk - 10km on the flat, around the whole base of the rock. A choice well made, as a few of the group were thinking tentatively about climbing it which I am vehemently against, and would berate anyone who will listen how wrong it is to climb*. Yay for sensible people. 

Judi (my new Glaswegian pal) and I mostly stuck together for the walk and enjoyed watching the amazing changes of colour, as the sun rose. I managed to take about three billion photos, of course, and oooh-ed and ahh-ed lots. It is so, so pretty. 

We got back to the bus to find David had cake and fruit waiting for us. Thank god for that, I was starving (again). From here we finished off the walk as David told us some of the aboriginal stories about the rock. Their stories are pretty awesome (though we non-aboriginal folk do not know most of them) and my one main souvenir from the gift shop was a book depicting a few of these stories. That and the “I went to Uluru and didn’t climb it” embroidered patch. 

Another highlight was walking beside one of the very high rock faces, where the water cascades over when it rains. It is so crazily high that photographs cannot even begin to depict how awesomely high it is. But I tried. It was stunning. 

Look how tiny the people are on the bottom right, for a sense of scale!

Back to the bus we trekked, time for lunch. Here we picked up two new tour recruits, who had decided they wanted to do another day trip with Adventure Tours, so had been palmed off to us for one last day of fun.  

Before we left camp we had another quick stop to see another baby camel because really how can you have too many baby camels on tour, the answer is you can’t.

Time for more driving. I tried to have a nap but to not much avail. Other noteworthy things included a very stinking toilet break where we got to climb a big orange sand dune to see a dried up salt lake…

..and “fool-uru”, Mt Connor that looks a bit like Uluru but isn’t. 

Spag bol for dinner, yum, washing up duty again for me, as I simply cannot work/cook whilst I am hungry. We also got a demonstration of how to make damper, which is camp fire bread.

Jasmine, Hellena (the new ladies) and I gatecrashed Rael’s neighbouring tour group as they had previously been with that tour and Rael had damper with chocolate and fruit in it. Plus French people who gave us “french apple juice”. Our walk to the camp included roaming in the dark, as did my night time visit to the toilet block, which left me wandering about a bit without a torch - so much fun. Especially when I heard this rustle in the bushes and was terrified I was about to hijacked by a gigantic snake, only to find it was someone who’d dragged their swag away from the group for a bit of peace and quiet, turning over. 

Finally we got to bed, probably only about 10:30PM, practically early by our standards, and this time the milky way was a lot more visible as the light pollution in the camp was minimal. Awesome. 

Last day of the tour, last day of madness. We had a lie in (6AM!) before departing to Kings Canyon for our daily hike.

We started with a ridiculously steep stair case up to the top of the canyon that left me looking like a red faced loon. Then clambered all along the top. It was only a mere 6km but took us 3 and a half hours on the uneven terrain, with a sizeable biscuit break by a watering hole, as we watched the spinifix pigeons (one of my favourite local birds).

The views were good and I enjoyed our amble through the canyon though nothing will top Uluru, that’s for sure. 

Back on the bus again, we had a lunch stop where I had the overwhelming desire to eat lots of tinned sweetcorn, and after which I had maxibon ice cream. A few of the group had a swim, I just sat in the shade, feeling a bit sunstroke-d and enjoyed the luxury of a chair. 

We hit the road at just after 1:30PM and made our way back to Alice Springs. We’d all agreed to go for dinner that night, though we ended up running late and didn’t get back until gone 7PM. That meant a mad rush for us to get changed in all of 15 minutes and head back out the door. No time for a shower, I wiped off my face (red from dust) and stuck a dress on. 

Chilli con roo (chilli con carne with kangaroo) for dinner, which was delicious and a few drinks with the crew. A good bunch they were! Afters we went out to a bar, I mainly hung out with my favourite jokers; Team Spain. 

And so ended our time on tour. 

The following day I headed out to the Alice Springs Desert Park, where I enjoyed a few different talks from the guides there and a bird show.

I also saw some kangaroos up close for the first time who were lazing in the sun and a bazillion different birds that they have in lovely enclosures. 

* Why people shouldn’t climb Uluru

1. No facilities on the rock, so if you need to go to the toilet, you have to go on the rock which not only degrades the rock its self but also poisons watering holes from the run off water when it rains. It has been proven that water quality has severely degraded due to this and therefore has a long term impact on wildlife and means aboriginals are now unable to swim in the watering holes like they used to. 
2. If people continue to climb the rock it will degrade the rocks surface and will never be the same again. 
3.  Most importantly, the rock is sacred to the Aboriginal people and they ask you not to climb it. Would you clamber over someones church? Or do something that severely disrespects someones religion? I wouldn’t. 
4.  The Aboriginal people have had a shitty time thanks to us white people, isn’t it about time we gave them a fucking break and respected their wishes? We already stole their children (trying to make them “white”) and completely displaced aboriginals in society, whilst subjecting them to endless racism. Lets just leave their sacred rock alone and walk round it instead, which is far prettier and much better for everyone concerned.

For more photos from Central Australia click here.