Well, we have been in Australia some time now, and we have finally got around to writing on the blog. So much has happened since we left NZ, some good, some not so good... Lets start in Sydney.
We arrived in Sydney, and to our disappointment it was overcast and raining, not a good start! We were stopping with Charlotte and her family, we spent 3 weeks with Charlotte in Peru, and she wisely invited us to stay when we visited Australia, she is probably regretting it now!
We had a fabulous 10 days in Sydney,luckily the weather changed from raining that first day to 10 glorious days of sunshine. We visited many of the local beaches (including the Summer Bay beach), went for a sail in a speed boat, took lots of pictures of the harbour bridge and opera house, popped up on Australian TV, fed possums, hit the town on a night out, got spoilt by the Story family, ate lots of creme eggs, visited the blue mountains, had a typical Aussie barbie (no shrimps though)...
We took many more pictures of the bridge and opera house, but we'll save all of those so that we can bore you when we get back!
A big thankyou to the Storey family, who made us feel at home in Sydney and went out of their way to show us the sights. Charlotte should definitely start working for the australian tourist board, her little lists of what we should do helped us enormously!!!
After being spoilt in Sydney we flew to Darwin right at the top of Oz. The flight was fine and there was no warning of the category 5 cyclone which was heading for Darwin in the next few days. We only found this out the day after when we went to book a tour to Kakadu park (the reason we went to Darwin), and no tours were leaving Darwin for the forseeable future, so we were stuck in Darwin, a ghost town, waiting for the force of a cyclone to hit, ready to run to the shelter if need be, all of the supermarkets had run out of essentials, and with nothing to do in the humid heat we waited... only to find out the following day that the Cyclone had changed direction and had missed us completely, apart from a strong breeze and a bit of rain we were safe, and a little disappointed!
Unfortunately, most of the parks were closed due to excessive rain and flooding so we went on the only available tour, Litchfield National Park. This was pretty spectacular, because of all of the rain, the rivers were fit to burst and the waterfalls were gushing over. We got to see some pretty impressive termite mounds, don't want to bore you with the details, but they are fascinating creatures, building enormous mounds out of their poo and spit (yuck!). We saw 2 different types of mounds, Cathedral and Magnetic. The catheral ones are huge towers which have lots of nooks and crannies, so that they maintain a prefect temperature throughthe shadows created. Underneathe the mounds is an underground storage area, which could fit in 6 people, huge! The magnetic ones are built in a thin structure facing north and south so that the mound is always part in sunlight and part in shadow, to keep a perfect temperature. We also saw ants with green bums that scurry around and if you are quick enough, you catch them and suck their bums(!) to get a vitamin c rich syrup, umm yum yum!
Unfortunately we didn't see any...
can you see their green bums?
A Cathedral termite mound.
Hannah's achievement of the day was a cute picture of a wallaby with a joey in it's pouch! James' achievement of the day was to throw Hannah's glasses down a river and lose them... Not a happy Hannah...
Can you see the Joey; cute!
Anyway...
After Litchfield we decided to get out of Darwin and head down to Alice Springs. We did a 3 day bus tour down there and stopped on the way at many outback towns, usually consisting of a pub and a few houses. The Devils marbles was the main stop, and they were incredible. Round rocks which stand precariously on their sides, as if they are about to roll away. A great 3 days, ending in a hostel in Alice, where the tour group (24 of us) went out for a night, and ate our first Kangaroo steak!
Many drinks later and just a couple of hours sleep, we got up at 4:30am (with a hangover!), to join another tour for 3 days in the Red Centre; Uluru, the Olgas and Kings Canyon. This tour was small there was 8 of us, and we rode in a 4 wheel drive Landcruiser, the journey was not smooth, so no snoozing in the back!
The 3 days spent in the red centre was amazing. We saw and did so many amazing things, from the wildlife, landscape, Aboriginal culture to the wood collecting and story telling around the camp fire!
Uluru (Ayers Rock) is a strange place, looking so different when you are up close, and has so much Aboriginal history to it. There are many areas you cannot photograph because it is a sacred sight for the aboriginals, and they are so secretive about their culture, that no one knows why. The sunset, was impressive, helped along by the wine and nibbles! Many photos taken... The Olgas were probably the best of the 3 rock formations we went to, they are enormous and so unexpected. Kings canyon was another great place, crawling to edge to look down into the canyon was a little nerve racking!
The best thing about our 3 days in the outback was the evenings, sleeping under the stars in our swags, and eating food cooked on the campfire. On our second night we were far away from the other tour groups and we really felt as though we were in the outback, we could hear the camels in the distance, and we had to heat up our water to have an outdoor shower, showering with the sun setting in front of you was quite an experience!
James in his swag; doesn't he look cosy?!
Unfortunately, the 3 days had to end, but the final drive was cool, a 100km stretch of dirt road, looking for wild camels and kangaroos!
A not so wild Kangaroo!
After arriving back in Alice we headed to the train station the next day to catch the Ghan train which took us all the way down to Adelaide 20 hours later.
We are now into the next part of our Australian adventure, the camper van and the road trip from adelaide to Sydney, but we will save that for another entry...