The Red Centre

Well, I'm sat here in Sydney and since we arrived back here it has been raining...not just raining, absolutely tipping it down! So, time for me to update my journey.
We left Adelaide on the Monday morning, Sue very kindly took us to the airport and waved us off. We got our flight to Alice Springs, while in the air I soon enough realised why central Australia is called the 'Red Centre'', it really is very red. We arrived in the desert a couple of hours later, it was even hotter than Adelaide and that was pretty warm! The whole time we were on our central trip the temperature didn't go below 40degrees during the day time. We had a little look around Alice Springs, not a great deal to see and also not really a very nice place. There were lots of aborriginals hanging around the streets and doing a lot of shouting at night, felt like I had to have my whits about me. The second day in Alice Ian and I went to the desert park, it was so hot, I drank so much water and didn't go to the toilet once all day! We saw lots of insects...especially flies which are very annoying. We wondered around, listened to a talk on how the aborriginals live in the bush, saw kangaroos, emus and different birds. My favourite bit was the nocturnal house, there was loads of lizzards, enchidna's, snakes, spiders...luckily they were all in glass cages. From the park we went back to the hostel and then Ang and Pete arrived. It was really great to see them, we spent the evening catching up and sharing our travel stories.
The following day we collected our wagon and started our journey. We headed for the Glen Helen Resort, on the way there we stopped at Simpsons Gap It was a pretty cool Gap! I kept thinking crocodiles were going to come out of the water behind where the picture was taken!
We left there and made our way to Ellery Creek, were going to go swimming...Ian and Pete got in but Ang and bottled it! The last stop before our final destination for the day was Orminston Gorge, we did want to go for a walk there but it was just far too hot to even get out of our lovely airconditioned car let alone walk a couple of km's! We got to Glen Helen resort and set up the tents, Ang and I spent a bit of time teasing the boys by sitting in the car pretending we weren't going to help put up the tents...we soon got out of the car and our tents were ready in no time! We had a swim in the pool, played scrabble and then went for our dinner. We went to the restaurant at the camp site, the food was wonderful, we tried kangaroo, emu, camel sausage and crocodile, all were very nice! The random thing about the restaurant though was the man serving us, he was a complete nut case!...really random and he'd set up us four poms...had a little joke going with the rest of the people in the restaurant. It was a random night! On our way up to our tents we saw the most amazing stars in the sky, it was so clear, the sky was almost full. It was then time to attempt going to brush my teeth, Ian came with me, to open the door you had to dodge the 3 lizzards on the door handle, once inside the place was crawling with ants, moths flying everywhere and spiders all around. It was horrible! Apart from that camping the first night was fun!
From Glen helen resort we had to go all the was back to Alice Springs and with our car we couldn't get through the unsealed roads to Kings Canyon. So after stocking up on petrol, water and food in Alice we drove to Kings Creek Station. Set up our tents, had a swim and then cooked burgers on the BBQ. For the rest of the eveing we played cards and murdered moths, flies and crickets! They kept flying into the candles...sometimes with a little help. This campsite I nicknamed the Moth place! Frome Kings Creek Station we left to go to Kings Canyon, we wanted to do a longer walk up to the top of the canyon but again the weather was too hot 42 in the shade. So we went for a short walk and got a few photos, I felt awful when we got back, I was just so hot. We drove another few hundred kms from there to Ayers Rock resort, the nicest of the 3 campsites. Here to be our home for 2 nights. The facilities were far better than the other places and the toilets were pretty much insect free. That wasn't to say the dining area wasn't though! We put up our tents, went in the pool and then drove to the national park for the sunset. The sunset wasn't great, but Ayers Rock is quite impressive. when we got back we had a BBQ, and this is when we realised that the dining area comes alive at night...the place was moving with cockroaches. We chose to stand up to eat our dinner! There was a mouse and a few rabbits around aswell as the usual moths, crickets and flies.
We got an early night as we were up at 5am to go and see the sunrise at Ayers Rock, can't say I was too impressed with the sunrise either. There was hundreds of crazy people standing around the huge rock waiting for the sun! We drove to the Olgas which are a set of rocks about 30 kms from Ayers Rock, we were there by 7:30am ready to start our walk. We walked about 10kms, arrived back at the car at 10am. The walk was great I really enjoyed it, got some superb views, the rocks were just unbelievable. It seemed the flies took a liking to my hat! We spent the rest of the day doing some washing and I did a lot of moaning as it was just too hot to do anything. We just sat there sweating for hours. It clouded over a little later so Ian and I went to the pool and chilled there for a while. Later we drove back to the Olgas to see the sunset, we didn't get a great sunset by the Olgas but as we drove away the colours in the sky were beautiful so we stopped to take a few photos on the way out of the national park. We stopped for petrol on the way back and managed to get some free sausage rolls and pies from the petrol station, it was great as we had nothing for dinner! Sausage roll and corn for dinner and then off to bed!
We got up fairly early, I packed the tent up all on my own in a matter of minutes had some breakfast and made our way to the massive 2 gate airport of Ayers Rock. The plane journey was pleasent