A Whirlwind through the Interior

So, the last couple of days have been pretty busy - we flew out of Sydney yesterday into Alice Springs and rented a car and headed down to Ayers Rock (now known more commonly by its aboriginal name, Uluru). We saw the Rock from fairly far away obviously, as it is sitting in the middle of a desert, and as we drove closer the size of it was nearly overwhelming. We dropped our bags at a 20-bed share hostel, and when I mean we I mean Jordache and me, as Kyle's bag had not made the connection through Melbourne. We headed into the park and then set up at an outlook after making a circuit around the Rock to watch its colours and contours shift as the sun went down.

We headed to bed fairly early with the intention of getting up to see the sunrise at the Rock, and we groggily pulled ourselves out of bed at 4:30 AM - or what we thought was 4:30 AM. The rest of the backpackers in the room must have been rather unimpressed, because we had forgotten to account for the time change from Sydney and it was actually 3:30 AM. We figured this out once we had checked out and loaded our things into the rental car, and by then we decided we might as well nap in the car at the lookout until the sunrise, which we did. I really can't say that it was worth it.

After the sunrise we were again on the road, heading back the way we came, but then took a 3 hour detour to see Kings Canyon, a gorge north of Uluru. We did the 6 km hike in the blazing heat (approximately 43 C) and then gratefully got back into our air-conditioned car and headed back to Alice Springs, where I am writing this now. The drive covered a lot of ground, but it went by quickly with the interesting scenery and the interesting roadkill (camels, cows and more kangaroos than you could count). The speed limit also helped limit the time on the road, with the limit being in some places as high as 130 km/hr, but we kept it under 160 km/hr to be safe.

Tomorrow we catch a flight to Melbourne where we will hopefully meet up with some cousins of Michelle Berkeley, buy our vehicle, ferry over to Tasmania and then head up the east coast after the island, surfing and camping as we go. We seemed to have gotten the tourist attractions out of the way early - The Sydney Opera House and Ayers Rock, and we are looking at just taking it easy for the next few weeks.