the outback

I arrived in Alice Springs on the 19th and checked into my hostel for the night then wandered into town for groceries for lunch and supper. The next morning the bus picked me up at 6am for our tour.

Day 1:

We walked through Kata Tjuta and the Valley of the Winds, watched an amazing sun set over Uluru then had supper which included Kangaroo Steaks and Camel Sausage yumm! We slept in swags that night, which are like little outdoor sleeping cocoons. The temperature probably got down to around 5 degrees C - not the weather you'd expect of Australia, but it is winter.

Day 2:

We woke up bright and early and drove to a viewing point where we had a clear view of the outback and the sun rising over Uluru. We then drove to the rock, had some time to walk around, then took a guided tour with an Aboriginal. We then drove to our next camping destination by King's Canyon. Slept outside in swags again, seriously google them, I want to buy my own and camp out under the stars every night.

Day 3:

Woke up, again, very early - which I personally love but most people weren't quite fans of. We then did a 6km hike through/around King's Canyon and the Garden of Eden, had lunch then drove the 5 hours back to Alice Springs. That night a bunch of us went out for food and beer and managed to get two free pitchers of beer, a lovely way to cap off a great three days if I do say so myself.

A little side note about our Aboriginal walking tour, the significance of Uluru, and Australia's history and present. What do you know about Australia's history? If you google it, the common information you get is the British history of the island, the convicts being sent here etc. Are you aware that Australia has an aboriginal population and their history bears an uncanny resemblance to ours in Canada? It's actually quite unsettling. I'd encourage you to read about it, I won't try to butcher their story here. 

Uluru (the giant rock) is a very significant place to the Aboriginals' traditions. There are points around the rock that it is requested that people don't photograph as they are sacred and meant to be viewed only in person. Is it also requested that people don't climb on the rock. Requested being the operative word. At one point, when the 'white man' was encouraging tourism to the rock, people were also encouraged to conquer and climb the rock (of course ignoring the wishes of the aboriginals). Now the traditional land owners and the Australian government care for the rock and its tourism together, but they still haven't officially closed the climb. They of course are worried it will hurt tourism. 

Here's the kicker: despite the signs and the wishes of the aboriginals sooo many people continue to climb the rock!! It's terrible! It disgusts me (obviously)! I don't care if you think someone else's religion is joke, it's a matter of respect to others of the human race. Anyways, I could go on for days, but that's enough for now. 

I then spent the next day in Alice Springs trying to find a way to get out of Alice Springs and north to Darwin (about 1800km I believe). I didn't want to fly and it's expensive and I wanted to see things along the way. I also didn't want to take the greyhound because it's a straight drive with no stopping except for fuel, and a train was really expensive. I was looking for a ride share with other backpackers or a vehicle relocation, an luckily stumbled upon the tour I am currently on. A two day express to Darwin, stopping at Devil's Marbles, staying the night at Daly Waters Pub, and Mataranka Hot Springs. 

I feel this post is getting long winded..

Devil's Marbles are a bunch of granite stones in the middle of nowhere (outback), scattered about and precariously stacked upon one another. Daly Waters Pub is the oldest pub in Australia and has quite the bit of county charm. Mataranka Hot Springs was a lovely ride down a warm river on a noodle and a swim back against the current so we could stay in the water longer!

I'm signing off now. I fly from Darwin to Manilla, Philippines on the 27th, stay overnight, fly to LA on the 28th, stay overnight, then fly to good old Fargo, ND on the 29th! If anyone has any friends in LA that want to party with a tall, brown Canadian girl (me) - let me know!

- Sabrina, Sab, Bina, Wood

*written on 25/6, published when I have wifi

apparently people read this

So, I guess I've kind of let the blogging fall by the wayside in favour of everything else. I feel like I should write a day by day update of what's happened since the last blog post, but that was more then a month a go and if I'm being honest, I don't want to. 

Currently I am 'alone' in Australia as Mardee flew back to the homeland on the 18th of June. On the 12th of June I flew to Melbourne by myself and spend the week there. Melbourne was an amazing city. Mardee kept telling me I would love it, but I didn't have any expectations upon arrival. The art in the city is thrown in your face, it just feels alive. I spent a week wandering through museums, exhibits, through lane-ways, and to monuments. For the week I stayed in a hostel named Home at the Mansion, which also made my time in the  city that much better. Google it. The building was an old Salvation Army building with a lot of the original architectural detail, and the crowd there was more my speed. Not a bunch of 18 year old backpackers drunk on cheap boxed wine, but more long-stayers that were a little older, a little more educated, and working in the city.

The pictures posted on here backwards, but a couple of things I did/visited in the city:

- Museum of Melbourne

- ACMI Museum and Costume Exhibit

- Hunted for amazing graffiti

- Shrine of Remembrance

- Federation Square

- Danced all Night at a club with some Brits

- Had various beers at various pubs

- Wandered the shops on Brunswick Street in the Fitzroy District

- Made friends with a bunch of Frenchies and regretted my extremely limited language skills

From Melbourne I flew to Alice Springs on Wednesday the 19th and that's a whole other post and pictures in itself. 

I'll elaborate in the next post, but I went on a 3 day/ 2 night tour of Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kata Tjuta (The Ulgas), and Kings Canyon. I'm now on a bus headed north through the outback, stopping to see things on the way with my final detonation being Darwin. 

- Sabrina, Sab, Bina, Wood

*written on 24/6, published when I have wifi

more.. adventures

The next chapter of our adventure brings us to Rainbow Beach where we spent three nights camping at Inskip Point.

When we first arrived at Rainbow we took a quick observation of the beach and the area then headed to the nearest shop to get an idea of what to do in the area and book our trip out to Fraser Island. The lady that helped us in the shop gave us so much great information about the area and no doubt made our stay there even better. From the shop we headed out to Carlo Sand Blow which is a giant, breathtaking, sand dune. To get there we parked in a shaded lot then walked through a path in the forest that opened up on the most vast expanse of sand that I've ever seen. The juxtaposition of the thick greenery to the wide open sand made it even more mind blowing. It's frustrating because pictures just do no justice. 

We ran and wandered around for a while, took some pictures, marveled. The lady from the shop had recommended we buy a boogie board with a hard plastic bottom to go 'sledding' down the dunes, so we tried that out. That also resulted in us not being completely grit-free for quite a few days afterwards. We've got a few good videos of it but alas I can't get them on here. 

That night we staked out our campsite by the beach, then laid on the beach reading until the sun set.

The thing about it being "winter" here is then sun sets at 5:30-6ish (later the further north we get) so there's a lot of time in the dark trying to figure out what to do with ourselves. We read or plan the next day or lately we've been playing cards or occasionally finding friends to hang out with. OR sometimes we just go to bed with the sun and wake up with the sun (which was originally a really hard concept for me to deal with because I constantly feel like I need to be doing something productive with my time, turns out you can just sit and appreciate or observe [truth be told Mard is better at this than me, I can do it for so long but then I get antsy or a little mad at myself for wasting time]).

Anywhooo...

The next day we headed on our trip to Fraser Island. The bus picked us up and drove on to the barge to take us from the point to the island (I think that would have to be one of the most boring jobs ever driving that barge the 10 minutes back and forth all day every day between the mainland and the island). Our bus was four wheel drive to drive through the rainforest paths and on the beach. It was built kind of like a bus on top of a semi with a trailer - the driver moved somewhat independent from us in the back.

Our driver/tour guide was great and knew so much about the island and the history and the vegetation and made the trip a great experience. Fraser is the largest sand island in the world and is the only place where rainforest grows on sand. Its history includes sand mining and logging, but is luckily now protected and on the World Heritage list.

The weather wasn't incredibly warm that day, but we were able to swim in the fresh water of Lake McKenzie which is one of few 'perched' or elevated freshwater lakes in the world and wander trough rainforest to Wanggoolba Creek which was unbelievably clear! Unfortunately the tide was really high that day so much so that we weren't actually able to drive further north to the afternoon portion of our trip to see the Pinnacles and the Maheno ship wreck. Our tour guide was great and shared some pictures and all the information and history that we would have learned and looking on the bright side (because I love the bright side) we got half of our money back.

We DID however get to see a DINGO! Which is a wild dog and relative of the Japanese wolf - the purest breed of the dingo exists on Fraser.

The picture you see though the front window of the bus is us driving back to the barge when the tide was high and crashing into the side of the dunes. A bit scary. The next picture is the vehicles ahead of us getting back on to the barge to head back to the mainland.

That evening we sat around a campfire at our 'neighbours', Jill and Steve, who were local to the area and had lots of good advice on what to see and where to go next.

Our last day at Rainbow/Inskip we drove out to Poona Lake Rec area and hiked 2.2km through rainforest to the freshwater lake. Mardee was nice enough to carry my bag for me so I could run back and I found the most effective way to increase my mile pace: hurdle a snake that is across your path and may be either harmless or deadly, hard to tell!

We drove back to the beach for the afternoon, made some delicious guacamole (as you can see in the picture of the back of the van), and laid on the beach.

We concluded our afternoon with our first (cold) shower since our departure! (ps. and showered again since)

- Sabrina, Bina, Wood