• Let's Go East

      25. februar 2018, Australien ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C

      Got up a bit later than the other days and packed our bags. Today our group got split up. 12 people myself included got dropped off at a hotel for an airport pickup later in the morning while the remaining 8 kept on driving to Alice Springs where their tour ends.
      We got to the airport and boarded our flight to Sydney, the flight was completely uneventful, however, arriving in Sydney meant lots of rain and a mere 20 degrees, which feels cold after 8 days with unrelenting heat.
      We arrived at our hostel 30 minutes before our welcome meeting, here we met Aaron A.k.a Azza and 8 new girls who join our group for the east coast. We went to the next door pub for dinner and had a good meal and some nice talks.
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    • Sun Ups & Sun Downs

      24. februar 2018, Australien ⋅ ☀️ 30 °C

      Yet another early morning to catch a sunrise, this time we saw the sun rise above Uluru. I think my favourite sunrise so far was the one on Devil's peak.
      We drove to the base walk and headed clock-wise around Uluru. The vegetation around Uluru is a lot denser and way more green than I had imagined.
      When we made it all the way around to where we did the Mala walk yesterday, Cara wasn't there, so I walked to where we started out base walk and thereby walked all the way around the monolith.
      After the walk we went to the cultural center in the national park. Here we could read stories, watch documentaries, see aborigines women paint traditional artwork, and of course buy souvenirs.
      We drove back at 11 for lunch, and people split up. I went to the pool with, Caro, Clara, and Emily.
      Next point on the agenda was a short walk at Kata Tjuta, Cara gave us a small talk explaining how this flat area has these massive rock formations. From Kata Tjuta we drove to a lookout to see Uluru change colour during the sunset. We managed to see a Sand Goanna and enjoyed the sunrise.
      We had another lovely dinner cooked by Cara before going for an astronomy tour where we got to see nebulas, constellations, population 2 stars, and the moon through telescopes magnifying more than 100x.
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    • King's Canyon and Uluru

      23. februar 2018, Australien ⋅ ☀️ 30 °C

      Got up early as we want to do our activities before it gets too hot, we have 40+ in the daytime, I'm loving the heat, but also happy we are not doing a 4 hour walk in that heat.
      We left our camp site in King's Creek to go to King's Canyon, here we did the rim track, a 6 km loop walk, which was really easy after the first 15 minutes with stairs.
      King's Canyon was beautiful, loads of red cliffs in amazing shapes. We also went into the Gardens of Eden, here all the water gets collected when it rains so it's lush and green in the Gardens of Eden where the rest of the area is less green as we are in a semi-arid zone.
      After King's Canyon, we went to pack lunches before driving towards Uluru. We saw wild camels and horses on the drive.
      We stopped at Mount Conner also know as Fuluru as many get to it on the highway and believe they have reached Uluru, but that is another 2 hours down the road.
      Arrived in Yulara township completing my final long drive in the outback, and checked in and went to the supermarket as a final stop before going close to Uluru.
      We got to our campground and quickly put our food in the fridge, and then we went to Uluru to do the Mala walk, a relatively short walk where Cara told us an Aboriginal legend, and taught us about different plants.
      Back at our campground we saw the sunset from a lookout right next to our home.
      After a lovely barbecue dinner with Kangaroo meatballs Aina, Emily, Jasmine, Katha, and I went to see the field of lights, a massive art piece consisting of 50 thousand solar powered colour changing LEDs.
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    • King's Creek

      22. februar 2018, Australien ⋅ ☀️ 11 °C

      Leaving bright and early was not early enough for us, so we packed the bus at 5 in the morning and hit the road. We stopped as the sun had climbed above the horizon for a few pictures before continuing down the highway.
      We stopped at the border between South Australia and Northern Territory. After that stop we drove 5 minutes to go collect firewood for our dinner, and then we had another hour to drive to Erlunda for lunch.
      On the drive to King's Creek we saw a few wild horses right before making it to our destination. The first of 2 camp sites, and where we will be camping for one night. We will be sleeping under the stars on swags, a mattress inside a mini tent, but as it is summer most people will probably sleep on top of it.
      But before sleeping some of us went quad biking.
      Quad biking was super fun, our guide would speed ahead so we could go at a speed we were comfortable with.
      Katie was leading our group of 6 and she went quite fast, and I was right behind her, literally right behind her, which meant I got super dusty.
      During the drive we reached speeds of 60+ km/h and took sharp turns, climbed cliffs, and drove on gravel where the we really could do sharp turns at higher speeds.
      After quad biking we had a lovely dinner cooked by Cara, and then we relaxed until we went to bed early as we had an early morning the next day.
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    • Opal Capital of the World

      21. februar 2018, Australien ⋅ ☀️ 36 °C

      So yesterday I claimed William Creek only has a pub. That's not entirely true. They also have an airstrip, so Aina, Danielle, (new) Emily, Katie, and I took a one hour flight to the painted hills. The painted hills are small hills made from soft rock with high iron content. They are completely of limits to the public and therefore in pristine state, however, as it is made from soft rock they are slowly eroding. But being 50 meters tall and stretching for 35 km and being 10 km wide, the painted hills won't be gone any time soon.
      On the way their we went by Anna Creek cattle station, the largest cattle station in the world, with 6.5 million acres or 26000 kilometres squared. And the painted hills are with Anna Creek station's land. The flight was done in a Cessna 210 at about 1500 feet and was about 200 km.
      After breakfast we left the Oodnadatta track to drive towards Coober Pedy, the opal capital of the world.
      On the way we stopped at the longest man made structure in the world. A 5000+ km long fence that keeps the Dingos north of the fence, as the south side is sheep country and the north side is cattle country.
      We made it to Coober Pedy and had some free time before going for a tour in the Umoona mine, it was cool as it gave a historical view on the opal mining in Australia.
      Cara took us to her friend Terry, who has an art gallery/kangaroo sanctuary with his wife Josephine. So hand fed big red kangaroos and saw him feed a baby. At was a cool surprise.
      We slept "underground" or rather inside a hill in a dugout.
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    • William Creek

      20. februar 2018, Australien ⋅ ☀️ 32 °C

      Got up early so I could do all my morning preparations before sunrise before heading to the eastern side of the sheep station to enjoy the sunrise.
      I the proceeded to the kitchen where Cara was cooking us a lovely breakfast. I helped prepare for the packed lunches we would make after breakfast.
      We left Beltana to go towards William Creek.
      We went by a friend of Cara's called Talc Alf, originally Dutch he immigrated to Australia at a young age. He now lives as an artist, in Lyndhurst, doing sculptures in talc stone. He also developed his own interpretation of letters origins and use that for names and countries as well. He was what most people would describe as a character, but he made a lot of sense and was so friendly.
      We drove to some ochre pits where we could see the different colours of the clay depending on the iron content. Cara did an aboriginal initiation ceremony where we painted eachother with the three colours. White for acknowledging we were there, orange for a wish upon the person we painted, red for a wish for ourselves.
      We drove on to Marree where we had our lunch break. We were traveling along the Oodnadatta track, a gravel road following the Gahn railway which doesn't run here anymore due to rain.
      After Marree we had 204 km left for William Creek, a bumpy ride. We had stops along the way at Lake Eyre Australia's largest salt lake and a bubbler, a natural pool of water bubbling up from under ground.
      We got to William Creek where we had dinner in the pub, which is the only thing there. We had a dress up party, themed "never would I ever" so we all wore stuff we wouldn't wear in public.
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    • Beltana Sheep Station

      19. februar 2018, Australien ⋅ ☀️ 32 °C

      We got up relatively early this morning so we could get to the foot of devil's peak at 06:30. This should allow enough time to make it to the peak before sunrise.
      The hike up the to the peak was a bit technical so it was good to wear hiking boots.
      At the peak I found a found a route called Nerve Test, so I obviously took that, and enjoyed the sunrise. Luckily everyone made it to the top before the sun appeared on the horizon.
      On the hike back Aina and I talked about the pros and cons of group travel. We have slightly different views, but also agree on some aspects.
      After the hike we drove back, packed lunches and picked up the snoozers.
      We drove to Kanyaka a former settlement, but as it is north of Goyder's line they didn't make it and it's now crumbling away.
      From Kanyaka we drove to Hawker to fix a tire on the trailer.
      After we had the tire fixed we drove to Wilpena National park for lunch before finally driving towards Beltana Sheep Station. It was a bumpy ride on gravel roads but the Flinders ranges were beautiful, and has that red colour associated with Australia.
      At Beltana we went to the pool, but after an hour I went for a walk. It was quite hot, and even though I wore sun screen I got some mild burns.
      We had a beautiful barbecue dinner, then we saw the sunset and I went tired to bed.
      However I got up again to go star gazing as we have very little light pollution here, so cool to see the milky way.
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    • Quorn

      18. februar 2018, Australien ⋅ ☀️ 28 °C

      Today we left Adelaide behind and went to Clare Valley where the rest of the group had a wine tasting at a Taylor's Vineyard.
      After the vineyard we went to the city of Clare and had lunch at Pancho's
      After lunch we drove to Quorn, a former railway town on the South- to North coast train called the Pichi Richi trail, on. However, the area gets to much rain so now the train is not going through here anymore. On the way to Quorn we stopped at Goyder's line, an arbitrary line made by a man named Goyder who said you won't be able to grow anything north of the line. Turned out he was right.
      After arriving at Quorn we went to Warren Gorge to look for rock wallabies, and luckily we managed to see a couple. On the drive we also saw an Emu with his 9 chicks (babies).
      We had dinner and celebrated Katha's birthday. On the way back from dinner, we saw hundreds of parrots fly across the sky in a cacophony of noise. Quite amazing.
      We all went early to bed as we have a sunrise hike tomorrow morning.
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    • Adelaide

      17. februar 2018, Australien ⋅ ⛅ 25 °C

      Free day in Adelaide, what is one to do.?
      Well Emily and I went via the river to the botanic gardens. Right outside the gardens we happened upon a big family of fruit bats taking their sunshine sleep.
      In the gardens we walked around and looked at the beautiful plants and went to the water lily pond and the rainforest house.
      After the gardens we went to the Adelaide Fringe festival for lunch.
      During lunch we spotted Aina who joined us when she was done shopping. We walked around the festival and got lured into seeing a show. It was a juggler who was quite funny in a very offhanded way that appealed to all ages.
      Aina went to the botanic gardens and Emily and I found some gelato and after that a supermarket.
      I went for dinner on my own at an Italian restaurant I saw yesterday.
      At 19:00 we had welcome meeting for 3 new people in our group. They seem nice, will be good to get to know them.
      After the meeting, Aina, Danielle, Emily and I went to a show at the Fringe festival with Baby Wants Candy, an improvised show where the audience select the title. We ended up with "Survivor: Mormons VS Lepers". It was really good.
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    • Waterfalls and Wallaby

      16. februar 2018, Australien ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

      Day 38 means I'm halfway on my journey, we started today with a sunrise in the Grampians before going to Jaws of death followed by MacKenzie Falls. From MacKenzie Falls I saw a route to Fish falls and took that trail as well.
      Right at fish falls I was surprised by a wallaby. Actually it was probably me surprising the wallaby.
      After the waterfalls we started our long drive to Adelaide. We stopped in Horsham for a food stop, later we stopped at a pink salt lake. We had a few more stops on the way before making it to Adelaide.
      In Adelaide most of us went to a Thai place for dinner. After which Emily and I strolled through a festival area. Here we saw a magician, some light shows on houses showing historical events and then we found a park where laser lights and smoke made a beautiful imitation of aurora borealis/australis.
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