So the journey began once again with a long trip back up towards the middle of Australia. Our first port of call was to visit Coober Pedy. This was just a quick overnight stop before we pushed on the next day to arrive at Uluru. We knew that we would have to pass by our beloved van Bill on the way to get to the big rock. We were unsure as to what to expect when Bill came into our sights. Sadly he had been stripped bare and also had his windows smashed. Adam found a few of our possessions still left lying in and around Bill which he rescued, the missing half of a pair of flip flops, a few books and his Spork. But not much else was left.
After we had said goodbye to Bill we finally arrived at Uluru. The sight was amazing as we drove up towards the camping area where we were going to be staying for three nights. The huge presence of Uluru is certainly felt even when you are still miles away from it. Many many photographs were taken; sunset of Uluru, sunrise of Uluru, in the day time at Uluru, and walking the full 10kms around Uluru. It was breath taking to actually see the piece of rock which I had only ever seen before in books and other peoples photographs.
We went and had a look around the information centre at the foot of Uluru and learnt the aboriginal story which was really interesting. The best part was looking through hundreds of ‘sorry letters’, which are letters from people from all over the world who had come to Uluru and taken away a piece of the rock and then received bad luck. They had then sent the pieces back complete with a sorry letter regretting what they had done. We looked around the other parts of Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park and had a walk around The Ogres. It is defiantly worth seeing for yourselves!
On our way back south we were caught in the tail end of cyclone Yasi and it rained continuously, because of this we ended up staying in Coober Pedy for 2 nights in a caravan instead of Ted the campercar. On the first night Adam was woken up by the caravan leaking drips on him! We were upgraded to a cabin which also leaked, but not on Adams head this time. I was a little gutted about the weather as I had planned to do some more opal noodling but instead all I did was sit inside and watch movies all day and night.
A two day drive took us over the border to Western Australia to a little place called Eucha. This little place is so remote that it even has its very own time zone. We were very confused about what the time was as the sat nav was telling us one time, the laptop another and then all the clocks we saw in the caravan reception area and toilet blocks each displayed a different time as well. Eventually though with the help of google we worked out the confusion. The weather was still wet and drizzly.
The next day took us across the Nullarbor Plain which means ‘no trees’ in aboriginal tongue. This is a very barren area and includes the straightest road in Australia. This is a 90 mile stretch of pure straight road, but with fog all around us it made for a very long and boring drive. We did however pass some interesting trees which had many objects hanging from the branches. There was a Christmas tree, a clothes tree, a shoe tree, even an underwear tree. This day was yet another 10 hour drive and after crossing the Nullarbor our next destination was Kalgoorlie.
