We are now sitting comfortably in Curtain Springs in the middle of the red centre of Australia... The Outback. Enjoying some wonderful & much needed red wine and chocolate.... oh life is good! :)
So it is time we sit back and reminisce our travels since our last blog. We sure enjoyed our relaxing in Adelaide. We had the mission to get a few things in order for the next bit of our trip & rest up. We thankfully achieved both! After getting our food and cars sorted, We took a day to explore bits of Adelaide. Our Adelaide host Owen took us chocolate and wine tasting, old building viewing (ie looked at some awesome heritage buildings), took us through the busy Adelaide markets, to lunch at a local pub & even showed us his bakery where the baker knows him by name. At the end of the day all of my friends in Adelaide came over to his place for some good home cooked dinner next to a burning fire.
The next day was another day to just sit back relax and chill. We caught up and said goodbye to my friends Adelaide at church. Afterwards we went back and got the last bits of our stuff packed and sorted. Owen was starving and itching to take us out to his pub. He took us out to an Indian restaurant where Natalie was able to have her first Indian food. Being with me Natalie has been experiencing a number of different culinary experiences, still on the list to get her to try is Sushi & Thai. We enjoyed Owen's pub & the lovely English ales it provided.
On Sunday we added an additional travel mate to this amazing road trip, a good friend of mine & an old flatmate from Brisbane, Vilma. We picked up Vilma from the airplane & started on our way after getting a few directions from Owen. As we headed up the highway the navigators started noting that they could find none of the towns on the map. Once we found the towns on the map we realized that we were almost back in Victoria! After flipping a U'iey and finding a new route we were very sad to discover that we were at least 3 hours off track.
We are currently traveling along the stuart highway that runs north-south through the centre of Australia, some of the harshest landscape on this earth. We stopped in a town, Cooper Pedy where most of the town is underground to shelter the town inhabitants from the 50 C (??F) heat. This town is surrounded by Opal mines where large holes are dug & men go down and dig out the opal. We stopped by a few of these holes in the ground along the road and dropped a rock down & it took at least 5 seconds for the rock to hit the bottom. These holes are deep! We did our best to avoid falling in...
After 2 solid days of driving with only a few quick stops we are currently 1 hour from Uluru (Ayers Rock). Tomorrow morning we are going to go watch the sunrise at Ayers Rock & hike around Kings Canyon.
I should probably get back to the lively discussion at our table that has developed since I started this blog here with a couple blocks here working on the roads painting all of the lines on the road. Funny enough we are sitting at the table that says (excuse the language please) “Beer & Bullshit Corner”. As we are discussing medicine, evolution, and politics, somehow it all fits here at this table... I am sure you only imagine how lively this discussion is! Talk to you all soon!
