PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES...
Trip Start
May 09, 2005
1
21
25
Trip End
Ongoing
Alice (Alice, who the feck is Alice?), Darwin and Perth...,
Australia
Sunday, March 5, 2006
The train journey on the 'Legendary Ghan' (as the Aussies call it! Ever heard of it?) took about 19 hours to reach Alice. Not much to do but take in the scenery; desert, desert, and err, desert! We did, however, see some fascinating wildlife; a horse, a sleeping cat and several cows! Arriving in Alice Springs you're hit straight away with the following: the heat (it averaged around 40 degrees), the flies, and if you're really unlucky, one of the many pissed Aboriginies that live on the street in town
1. BOBBY JONES!
! We were informed later by our tour guide that the Abs who lurk around town are the outcasts (the rapists, murders etc) who've been thrown out of their community. We had a week to wait before the next train travelled up to Darwin, so we took a 3-day outback trip, which was great fun! We rode a camel en route to The Rock (that's Ayers Rock, not the Scorpion King!), then headed to the Olgars, then back to The Rock for sunset and a night under the crystal clear skies... ahhh!
The next day we headed for a close up look of Ayers, and yep, it's definitely is a big rock! Unfortunately due to some selfish bastard dying a few years back of a heart attack we were unable to climb it (apparently it was too windy, but actually it wasn't!), so we ended up just walking around. Our tour guide threw in an interesting theory as to how Ayres was born, apparently two Aborigini kids built it with their bare hands and used it as a slide... well, kids will be kids! After an afternoon in the information center learning more totally believable Aborigini history, we left for our night stop near Kings Cannyon, where we spent another fantastic night in the swags, under the stars, intoxicated with goon...
A few hours later we were up and drearily staggering around Kings Cannyon, where we saw some bush trees, bush rocks, bush tomatoes (everything had 'bush' in front of it, so a nameless bush became a bush bush!). Luckily the weather was in the low 30s, so the trek was easy, plus we had a nice dip in a bush pool to cool us off further! The journey back to Alice was spent in and out of consciousness, but I do remember seeing a few feral camels
1. REALLY WILD SHOW!
. That night we had a big piss up with our group, who were very nice by the way! We had a nice mix this time; some English, some Irish, a young German lad donning a tash, and even a Ewan McGreggor look-a-like! The next few days were spent catching up on sleep before the second leg of the trip up to Darwin. The trip up to the top was a painful 23-hours on the Ghan. It was cool going from desert to tropical, and in true tropical condition, it was hot and shitty when we finally arrived at our destination.
Not messing around, we booked a 1-day tour of Litchfield and a 3-day tour of Kakado. Both parks were excellent. At Litchfield our tour guide basically didn't care what we did, so we ended up doing a few things that weren't on the flyer, ie rock climbing, jumping off rocks into plunge pools, swimming down creeks, riding on the top of the 4x4 whilst looking at a huge area of swamp land the guide had bought! Kakado on the other hand was with a more professional tour guide and was an amazing experience. We did loads of trekking, swimming, learnt lots about the Aboriginies (I won't bore you by making stuff up -- but it was interesting) and the land, saw some crocs, went drunken snake hunting, played games, talked of yester year and drank to good times... Plus I ate like a sumo wrestler for 4 days! It were proper brill!
Currently in Perth now, where we need to book on earlier flights to SE Asia (I'm really looking forward to Thailand now, where I'm going to buy a small village and live as their king!). Perth looks like another great city, but we're actually heading out of town to stay with one of my mum's old friends; 17 acres of land by a huge lake... should be alright! Until next time, folks...
