Or: 4500km in 11 days

So this is my first blog article in english. I decided to translate this one for all the international people I have met until now. It would have taken too long to translate all information from the german version, so please forgive me for leaving some parts out.

Jimte, who I met in Melbourne, wrote me after some wonderful weeks at Sam’s place that he’s going to the Outback. And like the Aussies say „Take every gap you find in a traffic jam“ I decided to go with him; and this was a good decision, it was wonderful!

We hired a small car together with a roof-tent from Adelaide. After some shopping, purchasing mainly water, we headed to Port Augusta and spent our first night there. Before we went to Uluru we travelled to the Flinders Ranges to see Wilpena Pound, which is only 250km away.  I took these pictures on our way to there:

Wilpena Pound is known for its mountains which forms kind of a natural amphitheatre. Between these mountains is a big range with eukalyptus trees.

The Highlight of this day was the drive to the campsite. There are good reasons not to drive during the sunset and night, and so we went very slow. The road went through nice hills which were coloured red by the sunset. We saw hundreds of kangaroos and dozens of emus in this wonderful scenery, who stretched there heads to take a look at us. Magnifient! The campsite was completely isolated and just a had a simple toilet. Like every evening, we had here front row seats to the milky way.

After our first night in the isolation we headed back to Port Augusta. We drove there on the Stuart Highway  – our Highway of desire. It is with its 2900km one of the longest roads in Australia. We traveld 1000km along it. Maybe you wondered when you read „only 250km to Wilpena Pound“. After driving the distances we drove, you think that everything under 500km is a pity. The directions were now not too complicated: 1024km straight forward, left, 260km straight forward, the second turn at the roundabout and you’re at Uluru. Haha – It did take a pretty long time though. Here are the highlights of the first part until Coober Pedy:

The 30-people town Glendambo at sunset:

Coober Pedy:

The next Highlight is the town of Coober Pedy. In fact, it is the only town between Port Augusta and Alice Springs with its 3500 inhabitants. After a boy had discoverd opals in the 1920s here, a lot of people came to try their luck searching for the Aussie treasures. Unbelieveable, but a huge lake covered the biggest part of Australia and caused the formation of opals here. 

Visting „Tom’s Working Mine“

I couldn’t resist some opal shopping and bought some nice pieces for little money.

The whole city lives for the opals. The little hills which were made up of excavation material and the danger signs warning for the deep wholes were facinating characteristics for this region. 60% of the people here live in underground houses to prevent themselves against the harshness of the heat. We were allowed to visit one:

We spent the night on Riba’s campground, where you can actually camp underground. The next day we drove to the Breakaways, which should be the most mars-like surface on the earth. This is the reason why both of the first parts of „Mad Max“ were recorded here. The third couldn’t be done here because it had rain too much and was covered with too much greenery.

Car park sign in the middle of nowhere

After that, we headed back along Stuart highway. Shortly (60km) before we turned left, we saw a funny thing: There was a truck with a trailer behind it. On the trailer was a little excavator with a man sitting on it, who smiled and waved to us. We met him again at the campsite. He was singing, playing ukulele and two old australian sisters couldn’t help but fall in love with him,  but they had reason too, he was indeed a relative of the hawain „IZ“ (Somewhere over the Rainbow). 

Sunset on the campground in Erldunda

 

After a 260km drive we finally reached the Uluru Resort. The first stop was at the cultural centre, where we were taught about a lot of aboriginal history. The Uluru is an important spirtual spot for the aborignal people. It was a huge change for aboriginal life when the settlers arrived and proclamated Uluru and the land around as their property. Their situation is getting better since 1985 when they got their land back. Today, they work together with the National Park management. It’s a matter of respect to their culture that the Uluru is nowadays called by their aborignal word, and the word „Ayer’s Rock“ is used less and less. Furthermore, less and less people climb on it. We also didn’t want to climb it, but we did a 10km hike around the Uluru. The smoothed rocks, its red colour, its gigantic height and width… Once you’ve seen this, you can understand why so many people decide to take this big trip to get there. Here are some pictures:

An extraordinary evening was our visit to the „Field of Lights“. There are 300.000 lamps on 5ha, which is an impressive view.

After two days we went to Kings Canyon, which is about 160km away from Uluru. Unfortunately that is about 350km by car. We hiked on the top of these limestone mountains and enjoyed some extraordinary views. You really become aware of the vast extent of the Outback here. From a mountain like this, you’d see at least one town or village in Germany. Here: Unsettled wideness.

The campsite here was very nice. I think that this region is a good place for holidays even better that Uluru and would have loved to have stayed longer. But there was one highlight in the night: I was woken at 12.30 from a dozen howling dingos. I even saw two walking next to my tent. these animals have a majestical spirit, they’re beautiful. A little bit scary – but also an extraordinary experience for me to see them up close. 

After that we had to head home, which meant 3 days of car driving. At our first stop, two retired couples invited us into their caravan for a coffe. Generally, we met a lot of friendly australian pensioners who escape the „cold“ australian winter in Adelaide or Melbourne for 4 months by travelling. Mostly in giant pick-ups with even larger caravans behind it. A nice older guy converted a 48 years old school bus into a luxury motorhome with a fridge, air condition, central heating, solar cells and even a washing machine. It was interesting that these people were indeed so pleased with our easy way of traveling. Also our cooking was easy: pasta with tomato sauce, tomato sauce, tomato sauce with tuna, tomato sauce with vegetables, rice with tomato sauce…

The salt lake Lake Hart

Sunset on our way back in Coober Pedy

Our last evening was again in Port Augusta, where we camped in a magnifient Conservation Park directly on the coast. We met a local scientist, a really outback born guy, who told us a lot about the nature here with its gulfs, fishs, breeding birds and kangaroos there. He invited us to feed some wild kangaroos behind his house the next day. 

We experienced the most wonderful sunset here. I say now goodbye with a picture of it and big „thank you“ to my travelmate Jimte. The next blog article is gonna be about my time with Sam and the Martin family in Adelaide.