The Red Center

Adelaide

We spent three days in Adelaide. Wow, it was awesome; if only for the luxury of the hotel room. I've never showered and bathed so much in such a short space of time. I felt like the Queen of Adelaide. We did emerge to do a little sight-seeing around the city. True to form, the sight-seeing soon descended into shopping topped off with drinking. Well, you have to make the most of it when you're in a city. The day we checked out of our hotel, the rest of the campers told us we were all invited to a barbecue at some couple's house that they had all met the night before. I thought those poor people only said that when they were drinking and most definitely did not intend for eight Irish and Scottish travellers to set up camp outside their house and feast in their garden all night. They actually turned out to be really welcoming and we spent the evening listening to their own travel stories and advice for our own journey. It was a lovely display of generosity and trust.

After an uneventful day travelling we finally approach Coober Pedy, the stop I was most looking forward to. As we left Port Augusta, the landscape was already changing. The soil starts to turn dryer and redder, there are vast plains with flat, red-brown mountains in the distance and the plant-life if mostly shrubs and trees that look like they should be in The Lion King. The most noticeable difference though, or rather, the most exciting difference is that from here, the sky is now endless and blue.

One of the underground buildings in Coober Pedy

We got to Coober Pedy around four-thirty and made our way to the lookout point beside our underground hotel and watched the sun go down over the strange Bedrock-style town. Coober Pedy is a town in the middle of desert, which was founded on Opal Mining, which still goes on today. Most of the people here, live underground to combat the hot days and freezing nights. We checked in to our cosy dug-out hotel room for a brilliant night's sleep. The next day we wandered around Coober Pedy. One of the sites we visited was Faye's Underground Home, dug out by three women by hand over ten years. The house is huge inside, it's unbelievable that someone could have done that by hand.


The next stop was another four hour drive away. The next stop was Kulgera, which consisted entirely of a roadhouse, fuel station, bar and camp-site. We had a great random night in the middle of nowhere, befriending the locals, a travelling couple from Queensland and the bunch of truckers that hung out in the smoking bay. It's hard to really comprehend how vast Australia is and that there are so many places like this dotted along the Stuart Highway that are hundreds of kilometres from any other civilisation.

Sunset

A watering hole in the middle of Uluru

On the journey to Uluru (Ayers Rock) we came across a herd of wild camels, just hanging out at the side of the road. They were happy to pose for pictures when we stopped to ogle them. When we arrived at Uluru, me and Barney went off on our own, doing a peaceful walk around the base. The rest of the group decided to climb to the top, and I think most of them made it. Around the base was gorgeous. It's not what you imagine at all. For a start, it's much bigger and it's not just some big rock. It's fascinating learning about how different areas were used by the Aboriginals for different things, and what certain aspects of the rock meant to them. It's an entire habitat, with trees. grassy areas, caves, watering holes, and sometimes rivers and waterfalls. Some of the places around it were little havens of peacefulness.. We made it to the sunset lookout point to capture Uluru glow red as the sun set behind us.