Due East (Part 4)

Today was a farewell to the people I just spent 30 days with travelling around Australia. It feels a bit odd but it’ll be nice to just hang out for a while without covering upto a 1000km by road in a day! Although with 3 families to visit in the same number of days when I get back to Sydney, I have a feeling it’ll still be busy.

So… news. Well, the sunset/rise theme has continued and I have more than enough photos of different ones to make a few calendars. The good side being that we’ve actually done some walking to get to good spots including, devil’s marbles and Uluru…

I spent a good hour debating whether or not to climb Uluru but then figured I might as well. 2 others did too. The rock is a sacred site but it’s not prohibited to climb, they just prefer you don’t. Stories abound of people coming upon great misfortune, having removed parts of the rock and eventually sending them back to their destination: we left it all there and we were fine until the last stretch when I dropped one of the girls’ cameras and watched it bounce down the steepest (maybe about 60-70 degrees i.e. nearly abseiling) 30 ft of rock before someone caught it. It didn’t turn on. Ooops.

Other than that, walked around the devil’s marbles (these are more sacred than Uluru and they don’t let you climb these), slept under the stars a few nights (the stars here are amazing: you can see millions of them and there are loads of shooting stars), took a hot air balloon flight in which we had to wake up stupidly early to catch the sunrise (and also a shooting star that lasted for about 6 seconds).

Also got onto a quad bike for a while. Left the track behind a few times in pursuit of ramming straight into trees (I think I had more control of the minibus and trailer than I did of this crazy machine). We ended the trip by riding a camel: interesting animals… they like following the others, which makes it very easy to ride, in one sense, although when they see food, they tend to do whatever they want to… eat.

And now… to the airport, and soon to New Zealand.

Much love to you all,
Luke.

Due East Part 3

OK, so I can’t even remember what number in the series we’re on but I think it’s number 3 as the last one on my blog was number 2.

Since then, life has been somewhat more tame; exchanging the adrenalin-fuelled activities with more sedate ones. Having spent a good deal of the first part of the trip searching for whales and lighthouses, the last few days have been on a sunset/sunrise and wildlife theme.

Spent a couple of long days on the unchanging outback, driving and driving and driving and managing to drink a bit in the evenings now and then. Yesterday being a prime example. One of the girls didn’t make it much past 9 and the other sometime before 12. At one point, I found myself dancing like a madman on the raised dance floor with Mark (the Belgium). Much fun.

Picture the scene: a little while later the dance floor is a little more populated and the music is too loud for conversation… a young lady walks up to me and taps me on the shoulder and mumbles something. So I shout in her ear “I can’t hear you”, this repeats again. The third time I worked out she was asking me if I was gay.

No. Apparently her mate was going to be disappointed. Hmm..

A little while later a lively looking lad comes up to me and asks if I was in the army.

Now what I want to know is… what is going on?

Right, off to bar. Ciao.