Adelaide - Uluru

I left Adelaide with new group early on Sunday (9th) and we turned our bus towards north. We did some wine tasting at Sevenhill winery at Clare Valley and after that we headed to Quorn – murder capital of Australia – for couple of nights. Town was the quietest place I have stayed so far on this trip. Feels like there is no one around so it is a bit surprising that just couple of weeks ago there was a double murder here and the statistics are not very flattering overall.

Next day we did a daytrip to nearby Flinders Ranges where we did some hiking. I myself hiked so called Mt. Ohlssen Bagge walk which offered some nice views down and around the Flinders Ranges area. Later the day we did short stops at Yourambulla aboriginal site as well as the ruins of Kanyaka homestead before returning to Quorn for the night. We also got our first feel of the outback weather as the temperature kept rising through the day all the way to 30 and at the same time the cooling wind of the morning changed to dry and hot breeze of the afternoon. At Coober Pedy it might be even 10 degrees more!

As we kept going north we stopped at Woomera for lunch and Lake Hart (salt lake) for some photos. The landscape has been changing all the time more and more dry which, of course, means the vegetation to slowly change from trees to bush land and finally just the famous red sand. At Cooper Pedy we got the first taste of outback environment which is extremely dry&hot. We spent the night  underground which was actually very comfortable and also very common way to live among the locals. After getting to know something about Opals we continued on towards north stopping for night at Marla. On the way we also had couple of photos of the Dog Fence (longest fence in the world, 5614 km) and the beautiful landscape of The Breakaways.

From Marla we finally made our way to Northern Territory and Erldunda where we changed to Adventure Tours bus. Our Topdeck group was placed in two different buses which was a bit annoying since we had already spend some time together and group was working quite ok. The bus I ended up was packed full (23 people) and so we began our drive towards Kings Canyon where we arrived later that afternoon. We did couple of walks (afternoon & morning) at the beautiful canyon before continuing to Uluru where arrived in the afternoon of Dec 14^th.

At Uluru we visited the aboriginal culture centre to familiarize ourselves with the key features of aboriginal life around the region. After that we did couple of walks at the base of the great rock and tried to enjoy a sunset at nearby lookout – only the view was darkened by a dust storm that made the visibility quite poor for photos. Next day we enjoyed yet another walk at Kata Tjutas NP where we did the Valley of the Winds walk after unsuccessful sunrise which was blocked by clouds and fog. Finally, after the walk we were able to get the full body shots of the rock with reasonable weather.

My great Australian road trip ended to Uluru as I boarded a plane to Cairns where I will enjoy the Great Barrier Reef underwater world for the last week of my trip.