AUSTRALIA!!!

Ive just found a colour change so that should brighten up these posts!!

Here we are by Ayres Rock or Uluru as the aboriginals call it! We got to australia after a very long flight and arrived in Alice Springs and it really is in the middle of nowhere - desert / RED sand as far as the eye can see with trees and plants and all sorts, just lots of nothingness! the first night we had our first roast dinner since we left home and it went down soooooo well! dont worry granny, it didnt touch on yours but it was good! There was also a snake and reptile show at the hostel so within hours of arriving we had the chance to hold a python! We were both a little tired (ok and scared) for that but the show was very good and told us all about what to do if we got bitten. The next day we started our tour, first stop was at The Olgas which means land of many heads, I havent put up a photo but is was very cool. we went for a walk around and my god the heat!! was very pretty, very red, I have never seen red like it, the red rocks of america were nowhere near as red as this. In the evening we went to Uluru to watch the sunset and it rained!! day 2 in australia, now rain for 300 days in the red centre and day 2 it was raining! But it wasn't all that bad, a quick downpour, we saw Uluru as many others wouldn't and then a rainbow shone over the rock which was incredible to see. The photos didnt come out so well of the rainbow so instead I put up this silly one of us "holding" the rock in the palms of our hands! We also went back to Uluru to watch the sunset which was beautiful but would have been even better if we'd seen the break of the horizon as well as the sun rising but it was good all the same! That day we had planned to climed uluru but it was closed so instead we walked round it which took the same amount of time! Its actually good to not climb it as the aboriginals see it as a burial ground so we are disrespecting them by climbing it! It was awesom all the same!

Heres me riding a camel, $5 for 5mins, i thought it was a bit of a bargain! we stopped at a few camel farms along our trip so I thought I should have a go! Gav didnt fancy it so Im on a camel with a girl from our group! it was a very smooth ride except the lift off and landing, they really are amazing animals we learnt a lot about them on our trip! did you know their humps are their food storage not water? and they do go flat, if they dont eat and use all their storage up! and they are the only animal on earth who can go from complete dehydration to rehydration by drinking a ton of water - if we did that our blood would dilute and we'd die - a bit like a flower! very cool!

These 2 photos are from our walk of Kings Canyon, ive forgotten the aboriginal name. The walk was amazing, we saw proof that the centre of australia was formally part of the tropical park with plants and living evidence, our guide Gary pictured pulling Gav up when he fell off kept us entertained with fake baby koalas in trees and other funny tales to catch us out on, funny man!!The photo of me and gav, behind you can see the canyon curls around yet your cant walk that way because of cracks and stuff, it took us 3 hours to get from one side to the other but it was an amazing walk, you could literally see millions of years of creation, incredible. oh the part to the left of the photo of me and gav is where Gary is pulling Gav up in the other photo, scary huh!!

hehe, after all that walking, Gav and I dedided to treat ourselves to an afternoon of quadbiking! I hadn't done it before and was a bit nervous , Gav led the way with the instructor, but I soon became excited and couldn't go fast enough! It was a lot of fun, I wished we'd had gone faster but it was great all the same!

right time to get up some more pics!!