The Train and Beyond

An early start to the day as I had to be at the train station early to drop my car off, now Google maps said that it would take about 30 minutes to get there so I got up at 5 to get ready and then left at 6, however it turns out that it only took 10 minutes to get there. Kind of annoying as that meant I had even longer to wait until the train left. After a little sleep in the waiting room I was awakened by more people coming in. this must mean that it was getting close to leaving! So on the train we all went and I was sat next to another girl who was travelling by herself and we ended up chatting most of the way there unless we were sleeping. We made a stop in Katherine for a couple of hours, so we went to the coffee shop for a drink and then went to Woolworths to stock up on some food as it seemed like we were the only ones on the train that didn’t bring any food with them. We decided to go have something quick to eat from the dinning cart and when we sat down one of the staff guys brought us over a plate of cheese and biscuits, we didn’t know whether to say that we didn’t order it or not so we just decided to stay quiet and eat it, especially as we realised that it wasn’t even on the menu which means he must have made it specially for us! The ride was pretty boring after that just the same scenery plus a couple of cows! Before we knew it, it went dark and we went to sleep. Didn’t take long for the morning to come around and then a couple of hours later we arrived in Alice Springs!!!! I couldn’t believe that I was actually here at last, Alice Spring and Uluru are the main reasons I came to Australia, well that plus the Great Barrier Reef. We both went for a quick walk around town and got some breakfast, and then we went our separate ways again. Instead of staying in Alice I decided I was going to drive to the West McDonald Ranges, lovely drive once I figured out how to get there. Driving around I couldn’t get the smile off my face, I loved the change of scenery and the fact that it was a much dryer heat then Darwin. I first stopped off at this natural pool and went for a quick swim, nearly had the place to myself but then another two people turned up, wasn’t impressed. After this I pretty much drove straight to a place called Glen Helen, which is where I was going to be staying the night. It was still rather early when I got there so I saw that they were doing helicopter rides…after looking at the prices I decided that I could maybe just about afford the cheapest one they were doing. Unfortunately there had to be a minimum of 2 people in order for them to do a flight so I had to wait around to find out if anyone else that turned up would want to go for a ride. Thankfully a couple of hours later a tour bus turned up and a couple of ladies who wanted to go up. It only lasted for about 6 minutes but it was 6 minutes that I will remember it was the first time I had ever been in a helicopter and it hopefully won’t be the last. Once we got back I went on a walk and nearly got lost as I couldn’t find the next marker but it turned up finally and I was able to find my way back! Next morning I headed off back in the direction I came as annoyingly I couldn’t do the loop I wanted because I didn’t have a 4X4 L but I didn’t mind too much as it gave me a chance to stop at the stops that I didn’t do yesterday. At one of the stops I went up to the lookout but about half way up I had one of those moments where you realise that you shouldn’t be doing this by yourself especially because no one knows that you are there. The walk to get to the lookout was more of a climb then a walk and there were a couple of shear drops which slightly worried me a little but I got there and it was worth it! And the main thing is, is that I managed to get back down again. I carried on with my drive back to Alice and went through Alice to the Ross River Highway and ended up at the Ross River Homestead. It seemed a little odd when I first got there as there seemed to be no one around so I just set up my tent and read my book whilst I waited for people to be around. A few minutes later the owner, Shane, comes back and says ‘you fancy a drive’, and without thinking about it I said yes. So we jumped into his 4X4 and off we went, he showed me around his “back garden”, which is a massive outback station, and we went to his windmill that he had just fixed as he wanted to make a fishing pond for himself, so he had to fix the windmill so that he could get the water pumping again. After the drive I had fallen in love with the place, it was perfect and somewhere my dad would be very jealous of. Shane was already trying to talk me into staying for longer than one night but unfortunately I had my train booked and I didn’t think I would be able to get my money back, so I told him I would stay for another night as a compromise. This gave me the chance to get to know the other guys that were working there, we spent the day playing pool, and we went rock climbing down at John Hays Rock pool, amazing natural pools. The next day I was meant to be heading to Uluru, and it turned out that the two Scottish guys who I meet wanted to go as well, but they couldn’t drive and were going to get a tour there, so I told them they could come along with me if they could get the time off work, which they did and the 3 of us set off for Uluru and Kings Canyon the following morning. After a long drive we eventually saw what we thought was Uluru, but it turns out that it was another mountain called Mt. Connor, apparently everyone gets it confused so it has been nicknamed Falsaru. So my two new travel buddies and me headed off again and carried on down the long, straight road eventually to see the real Uluru. To start off with I didn’t think that it looked that impressive as Mt. Connor was bigger and looked better, but we were prepared to give it a chance (after all we had just driven all that way!) however the giving it a chance would have to wait till the next day as by the time we got into camp none of us could be bothered to go to see the sunset, so we went and cooked dinner and started on the drinking! It was during this drinking session that I decide that I was going to stay at Ross River for a month, now I could blame Dan and Chris for this but at the end of the day they hardly had to persuade me much! After a bottle of rum and a bottle of Jack Daniels between the three of us, we decided it was time for bed. When we eventually ventured out the next day we headed into Uluru and bravely decided to do the 10Km walk around the base of Uluru, starting off very enthusiastically and with only a bottle of water each in the mid-day heat, it wasn’t very long until we realised what a stupid idea it was! Even though the time of day wasn’t great, the actual walk it’s self was pretty cool, what I didn’t realise on the other hand is that a lot of the walk you are not allowed to take photos because they are sacred sites to the aboriginals, which is a bit of a shame because when you weren’t meant to take a photo is when you really wanted to take a photo…but don’t worry we managed to get a few sneaky photos in (well can you blame us, the rock looked really cool, we needed to get photos). After a hot, near four hour walk, we finally reached the beginning again, and then, much to our annoyance we realised that the climb was open, but by this point we were all knackered from the walk so we didn’t end up climbing Uluru. So back to the camp we went, where we thought that we would go for a lovely peaceful swim as we saw that no one else was in the pool. Unfortunately this is not what happened, as after about 10 minutes a girls school group decided to come join us and the pool was overtaken by them. We stayed in the pool for about half an hour before we decided to call it quits. After an early dinner we all went off to watch the sunset over Uluru, I was a little bit disappointed with the sunset, as everyone always hypes it up but it just seemed a little rubbish because there is a sunset viewing park that you are told you should go to, but looking back at it now, I would have gone further round and seen it from a different angle. The sunrise the next morning, on the other hand, was impressive. It was only Dan and myself that ended up watching the sunrise as Chris didn’t want to wake up at 5 in the morning, again we went to the actual sunrise viewing area, where we both found a good spot which was free from everyone else, but after about 10 minutes we got invaded by everyone else and we had to fight to keep our spot. But sunrise was lovely, the shadows that all the ridges on the rock made looked amazing and defiantly made it worthwhile waking up at five in the morning. After waking Chris up when we got back we packed up camp and headed off on the road again towards Kings Canyon, this was only about a 3 hour drive if I remember rightly. So we got there just after midday, and we had the choice of going to the camp site first or to go straight into Kings Canyon, we decided on going straight to Kings Canyon. Now you would have thought that we would have learnt from our mistake yesterday that doing any sort of walking in the midday heat was a stupid idea, we didn’t. It was 1 in the afternoon and the idea of doing a 3 hour climb/walk sounded like a good idea to us!! Least we weren’t the only ones being stupid. The first part was a gruelling climb up the side of the cliff (ok there were steps but it was still a near straight up climb) once you got to the top of this section the view was instantly wonderful, but that wasn’t the highest part yet. The rest of the walk was pretty easy just having to follow the ‘path’ then we saw that there was a water hole that you could go swimming in, but we were still a little while away so we missioned it to the water hole only stopping every now and then to take some photos of the scenery.  We eventually got down to the water hole, all feeling the heat, me the most, so we just sat in the shade for a bit before plunging into the near freezing cold water. But man it was refreshing. We carried on along the walk and reached the top, the view was breath taking you could see all along the canyon and beyond. Considering how long it took us to walk to the top, it only took us about five minutes to walk down again, and we were back in the car park before we knew it. Next stop was the camp site, first of all we were thinking about getting a cabin as we were all really tired and wanted a good night sleep, but they were fully booked so that put a stop to that idea, tent it was then. Once we set up the tent and swag, we were all getting a little tired and grumpy with each other so we went for a little sleep before attempting to cook dinner. The ladies that were camping next to us, warned us not to leave any food in our tent as the night before they had left bread in their tent and dingo’s ripped the tent open to get to it. So that night we made sure that there was not food anywhere in or around the tent, but I woke up in the middle of the night to Dan cuddling into me swearing because he had seen and heard a dingo outside, and from that point on, it wasn’t a good night’s sleep as we were both worried that a dingo was going to attack us. This is just what I needed considering I had a 6 hour drive to do the next day! Once we got back to Ross River I broke the news to them that I would be staying for another month, and they were more than happy about that news, it was just the matter of figuring out where I would be sleeping but that was sorted out pretty quickly. So that was it, I am now a fully fletched member of the Ross River gang. And all I have to do is work for four hours 5 days a week and I get free accommodation and free food every day, so really not a bad deal. During the afternoons we try and keep ourselves busy by either going down the John Hays waterhole, or random drives around the property. During a couple of the evenings we have gone for a camp fire up on Contiki Hill, and camped there over night, where Cathal decided to dance on top of his car before going to sleep and when we woke up in the morning we saw the massive dents in the top of his car. I have also been on another helicopter since I have been here; Dan took me on a ride over what I call our ‘back garden’. This was pretty amazing as I got to see where everything was. Since I have been here I have decided that I am now staying for 3 months because if I work here for 88 days then I will be able to apply for my second year visa. I still don’t know if I want my second year visa but this was least I will have the option of it if I do want to stay longer, but don’t worry I will still be coming home in November for a few months.