First Taste of the Outback at the Red Centre

It's been about two weeks since our last post. We've been through a lot of remote towns lately so internet time can be a bit pricey. For example, it cost A$12 per hour in Yulara (Ayers Rock Resort) so we've waited to post again until we were in a bigger town.

Now we're in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, or the Red Centre of Australia. It took us five days to get to this area from Cairns. As we headed inland from Cairns, we found that people were giving us the finger. No, I don't mean that they were sticking up their middle finger. Instead, with both hands on the steering wheel, they would raise an index finger as a way to say hello. Since we've had so much driving to do, some times we pass the time by seeing how many people in a row that we can get to 'give us the finger' by raising one ourselves. So far we are up to six in a row but I'll let you know if we beat this record.

The day that we left Cairns, we drove across three different landscapes in one day. It was amazing. First we were in the tropical rainforest area. Then we drove through the Atherton Tablelands, which reminded us of the rolling green hills in Ireland. Finally we entered the Outback. How many countries have such extreme changes in landscapes?

I (Melissa) was ignorant of the Outback thinking that it would all look the same -- desert with not much to see. However, the landscape throughout the Outback varies a lot from the different types of plants to the colour of the sand (yellow or red) to whether it is flat or hilly.

The highlights of the last week in the Red Centre have been Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kata Tjuta (The Olgas), Watarrka (Kings Canyon) and the West MacDonnell Range. While it took a lot of driving to get to these places, it was well worth the effort. We had originally planned to see the first two sites but so many people that we've met the last few weeks strongly recommended the last two sites so we're glad that we listened to them. The way the colours change at these locations during sunrise and sunset was spectacular. We also did quite a lot of hiking with beautiful views along the way so that was right up our alley of things we like to do.

If you are wondering, yes, we are still camping. We've camped for four weeks. Klas has used many bottles of hand sanitiser -- just kidding; the camp sites feel cleaner than some of the other accommodation that we have stayed in elsewhere.

Now we are going to head north again to the top-middle section of Australia before heading west. Since we weren't able to upload many photos in the last blog post, we've added a lot of photos below so we hope you enjoy them. We just realised that we have taken more than 10,000 photos on this trip.


New South Wales (mid-eastern section of Australia)


Nabucca Heads


Urunga boardwalk where two rivers meet the ocean


Crystal Shower Falls


New England National Park


Cape Byron

Queensland (top-eastern part of Australia)



Australia Zoo



Magnetic Island


Great Barrier Reef


Cape Tribulation


Daintree Rainforest at Cape Tribulation


Daintree Rainforest meets the beach


Atherton Tablelands


Caution: Kangaroo Crossing

Red Centre in the Northern Territory (central part of Australia)

Sunset at Uluru

Sunrise at Uluru

On top of Uluru

Kata Tjuta


Kings Canyon


Ormiston Gorge at the West MacDonnell Range