To the two Judes:

Jude Marshall my mother because she is a teacher and has always pointed out spelling mistakes to me and,

Jude Tsai my flat mate who is some kind of grammatical genius.

I apologize for any grammatical errors, any punctuation problems or any incorrect sentence structuring in the following blog.

 

 

Day one: Melbourne to Mildura.  Departure time 6:10am

Arrival time 1:10pm.  Start odometer - 82304

 

After my cop friend reminded me not to pickup any hitch- hikers. Not to help anyone who had broken down, not even if they had kids or were pregnant. And after dad gave me a baseball bat and a knife for protection, I got into my happy van ‘Sunny’ and started my big Australia road trip with Louisa.

 

Whoever told me that having going away drinks the night before you leave was a stupid idea was a genius.  I truly thought that my 6pm-9pm drinks would finish on time and I would be tucked up early enough to get a good enough sleep to get going at 6am.

I got to bed at 12am.

Getting up at 4:45am was not too bad but my first two hours of driving in the dark, while it was raining was a struggle.

After two hours our rule is to swap drivers and I couldn’t wait.  My eyes were about to fall out of my head and my legs were already sore.  Louisa took over the driving and I got some much-needed shut-eye.

We had a quick stop for a roadhouse coffee (my favourtie thing to have on a road trip) and two potato cakes before we made our next two-hour swap-over and Louisa fell straight off to sleep.

Needless to say the first leg of our trip was quiet and not as party like as I’d imagined.  The radio was pretty much turned down low and sleep was the order of the day.

Wow – we are so much fun…

 

We stopped in Red Cliffs at the local bakery to have a famous local pie before we did our last 30kms into Mildura and tried to find a camping ground.  After having a quick look at the camping ground and being extremely tired we hired a hotel and hopped straight into bed and had a two-hour snooze.  When we woke up from our snooze it was time to go to Stefano’s.  Yum.  We had a five-course degustation menu with matching wines.

You don’t get told what you’re eating until it comes to your table and there is no wine list.  You can’t make any changes to anything unless you have any allergies. So you basically get what you’re given and enjoy it without complaining.  What an excellent idea – I’m thinking of doing this at The Park Hotel.

First course – smoked salmon with basil, fennel & sauv blanc

Second course – Soufflé with Gorgonzola sauce & nebiolo

Third course – Homemade ravioli with quail & Shiraz.

(By this stage Louisa was quite tipsy and a little bit crazy so I banned her from a drink on course four)

Fourth course – Lambs neck with cerelic mash and snow peas & another Shiraz.

(I wasn’t crazy about the lamb’s neck and after my last Shiraz was also getting tipsy and a little bit stupid so I banned myself from having a dessert wine)

Fifth course – Custard in a filo pastry cup with fresh cream on the side.

We both were basically asleep in our desserts by this time and had asked for the bill to come with our last course, paid, went back to the hotel and passed out.

 

Greatest song today – Baby animals ‘rush you’

Favourtie town name – Carwarp

Animals hit – 0 but two birds came bloody close.

Best buy so far – my thermal armbands.

Things thrown out – 0

Funniest thing – Louisa being asleep with her seatbelt somehow wrapped around her head with her mouth wide open.

 

 

Day two: Mildura to Port Augusta.  Start time 7:30am.  Arrival time 4pm.  Odometer reading: 82837

 

We started off with a quick and early breakfast at the hotel and took off to Port Augusta.

Sunny loves the road at the moment and is purring along quite happily on the highways.

What a difference some sleep makes too.  Louisa and I both managed to stay awake the whole time the other was driving.  I’m not sure I would classify this as being the best news though.  Louisa is what I would call a ‘moving passenger’ or basically someone who can’t sit still.  She described herself yesterday as Donkey from Shrek.  I guess someone who moves around and talks a lot.  I guess that would make me Shrek.  I’m fine with that.  I’ll have to keep an eye on this analogy and how it’s progressing.

 

Our first stop was at the border where we had to join in the fruit eating party at the side of the road.  We’d forgotten that we had bananas and set about eating them at a mad pace.  I don’t know why we couldn’t have just thrown them instead of having to chow them down madly but it was quite funny.

 

Our second quick stop was at the Big Orange.  Yes, we’d finally made it to our first ‘BIG’ thing and had to stop and take a photo.  Unfortunately the Big Orange was closed but was clearly visible from the side of the road.

 

We then had to do some wine and fruit stockpiling for when we hit the dessert in a small town called Berri.  (Note the order of importance)  It’s amazing that the locals can tell we are out of town-ers.  Not sure if it’s the big, bright yellow van we’re driving or the way we look but by any means everyone we have met has been ultra lovely and very willing to help us out with any questions.  In the Berri wine store the lady gave us directions to Port Augusta twice and then twice again once she’d gotten her map out.  It turned out we’d already decided on the same route but it was a very friendly gesture.

We bought six bottles of various reds so we don’t have to pay $xxx prices in the outback.  We also picked up a bag of oranges at the fruit stall, a bag of avocadoes and some sultanas.  We politely refused the fruit mans generous offer of $2 for a huge Italian butternut pumpkin because it has no place on our trip.

 

We stopped next at Burra for lunch.  We’d bought some fresh bread rolls and made some ham, camembert and roasted capsicum and cashew pesto and ate them down by the lake.  Yummo.

 

Unfortunately we had forgotten that we could not take booze into the Woomera Prohibited Area and actually had to pass through a booze patrol section that would check your car.  I thought about the fruit party we had on the side of the road earlier and wondered if we could do something similar with six bottles of red and a bottle of cognac.  Luckily the booze patrol was closed and we cruised through the town pretty quickly.  When we next stopped I made sure out booze was hidden under the bed just in case we got pulled over.

 

We’d made a decision to not make it to our original destination about an hour North of Port Augusta.  We were both still a bit tired and decided we’d stop about an hour from Port Augusta and pull over to our first camp-site.  We’d chosen a camping site because I’d started to fret about staying in a rest area.  Basically a rest area is just a dirt road pull off on the side of the highway and all my horror movies roared back into my head at the thought of it.  We pulled into a camp ground and spotted a family of emus.  We looked around for the camping area and found not one soul there.  I instructed Louisa to keep driving to the next campsite so at least we had some company.  An hour and a forty-five minutes later and due to my extremely poor map skills – we were in our original destination of an hour North of Port Augusta and in a rest area.  Too funny.

We were the first ones to pull in as the sun was going down but shortly after about four grey nomad vans pulled in.  I guess they can pull up later because they can cook and keep warm in their vans.  I started a small fire while Louisa put the chairs and tables out and started an anti-pasto platter.   No canned goods tonight!  We cracked a bottle of red and chilled out for a bit before making a yummy tuna pasta.  Unfortunately we were harassed by a wild cat (and I thought I didn’t like normal cats) and had to pack up quickly and retire for the night.  It was 7:30pm.  This is when we both cracked the shits.  Packing up, trying to get changed, trying to move everything around, putting up the curtains – everything was very, very annoying.  One of the curtains decided it was going to stretch and therefore not cover any of the window.  In the half dark Louisa and I did an emergency C-section to fix it.  Thank god Dads tool kit he gave me included some pliers.

Once we lay down we both felt a bit better and had a laugh about cracking it.  We tried to watch The Pelican Brief but fell asleep by about 9:30pm.

 

 

Greatest song today –  Ice house, electric blue.

Animals hit – Louisa x1 Galah and a very close Roo.

            - Brooke x0

Favourite town name – Booborowie.

Things thrown out – 0

Funniest thing – Louisa not being able to say one town name properly today.  Not one.

Saddest moment – inspecting the stone chip marks on Sunnys face today.  A part of my heart broke.

Things broken – drivers side mirror.

Things broken on me – left wrist, both legs and back.  Nothing a good stretch won’t sort out.

 

 

Day three: Port Augusta – Coober Pedy Start time 9:10am.  Arrival time 3:00pm.  Odometer reading: 83936

 

We started off this morning at a grey nomad time of 9:10am.  Some of them actually beat us off.  Disgraceful.  We had some toast with avocado, vegemite and egg – packed up and took off.

 

I could tell I’d done a stellar job fixing the side mirror.  The minute we hit 100km/h it flopped down and is now facing the road.  If Jude pub were here that thing would be so well fixed you couldn’t angle-grind it off the car.  Pity.

 

I decided to listen to one of my all time favourite tracks: Jam and Spoon, Ride in the night.  It started my two hours of driving off extremely well and from then on it was trance all the way.  I’m not sure what was going on with this morning’s energy but even Sunny decided to take it up a notch by doing 120km/h.  We even hit 130km/h once going down a hill.  We made a short stop about half way so I could drink a roadside coffee from Spud’s roadside diner and then continued.  I’m not sure what they put in those coffees but I love them.  They taste like crap but after one you become obsessed with driving.

Basically Sunny and I chewed up 230kms faster than I can drink red wine.

 

I discovered today that there is the wave to other cars just like there is the kombi wave.  The only difference here is that you don’t wave to the grey nomads.  I can only assume they have a secret wave themselves.  It’s not a full wave either, just a one finger lift kind of thing.  It’s a good idea cause it keeps your mind on something else to do.  My mind tends to wander off every now and again and the wave brings it back.  You also have to drive with your lights on 24 hours a day.  It must be the same thing as the wave.  Looking at the same scenery all the time and concentrating for two hours gets hard.  The lights of an oncoming car even during the day, gets your mind back on the job.

 

We stopped quickly in G…. to make some sandwiches and get our last fill up of petrol before Coober Pedy.  We had about 260kms to go so we filled up two 5litre petrol containers too just in case we didn’t make it on the tank.

 

Louisa was driving the second and final leg to Coober Pedy and is still a little worried when she sees birds on the road due to the Galah killing.  I swear she hit another little bird today but she insists she didn’t.  We did see some beautiful wedge-tailed eagles about six of them feeding off a dead kangaroo in the middle of the road.  It wasn’t such a beautiful setting with the dead roo but they are amazing looking eagles.

 

We had about 20km’s to go when we hit some road works coming into Coober Pedy.  Louisa had to slow down to 40km/h which Sunny was clearly unimpressed with.  Louisa also tried to go through a roadwork block with a man holding a stop sign.  I must admit I said, “just keep going” – clearly neither of us was thinking.  The men just laughed when we finally pulled over and asked us why we were in such a hurry.  Silly.

 

Finally we crawled into CP, filled up with petrol and went straight for a beer.  But alas, no beer without food.  We continued on to find The Desert Cave Hotel and then went straight to the underground bar and had a beer.  I tried the West End Draught it wasn’t too bad.

We booked a tour through the Backpacker joint ($80 cheaper than the hotel) and went to find the Italo Resto and Bar for dinner, and what a find it was. It was a fair walk from our hotel and obviously not too touristy.  When we walked in the smell reminded me of my Nan’s house and I soon found out why.  Not only had we made it in time for happy hour drinks but also it was $10 roast night.  Yum.  I don’t think we talked to each other while we were eating.

 

After dinner we walked back to the hotel where we fell into bed at 7:30pm (my idea of heaven but not Lou’s) – I was asleep by 8:30pm.

 

Greatest song today – Jam & Spoon Ride in the night.

Animals hit – Louisa x1 (I think 2 secretly.)

            - Brooke x0

Favourite lake name – Lake Young Husband.

Things thrown out – 0 (but getting closer to chucking a lot)

Funniest thing – Louisa re-enacting her mouth open sleep to a hysterical me after roadhouse coffee.

Saddest moment – When the mirror flopped down.

Things broken – drivers side mirror again and now Sunny has lost her eyelash and grate to protect her eye!

 

Day four:  Coober Pedy town tour.

 

Cracked the shits this morning.  We moved to Ribas Caravan Park and Louisa asked me to put up the shade attachment that joins to the kombi.  I thought this was a ridiculous idea seeing as we had a town tour in a couple of hours and we were only staying one night, and went about letting her know this.  Louisa was trying to cook breakfast but it was too windy. 

We both cracked the shits with each other. 

Then we both had a glass of red wine and had a laugh.  Who said wine wasn’t any good before 10:30am?

We cooked breakfast in the trangia (thank-you Lauren Lewis for this awesome piece of cooking equipment) in the car and forgot about the shade attachment thing.  The whole stupid thing was that we could’ve used the caravan parks kitchen area which would’ve saved us a lot of time and saved us the 1000 flies that soon swamped into the kombi and around our faces.  Gross.

We’d bought a bag of ice and to my horror it hard started to leak out of the eski.  Mainly because I had forgotten the eski plug.  When Louisa asked where it was I told her it was still on the sink at home.  We did an excellent job of blu-tacking the hole up on both sides and have put the eski on a 45 degree angle just to make sure.

Ask the Leyland sisters.

 

The tour was brilliant.  Coober Pedy is an amazing town with way too much to write about.  For a town that just looks like red rock there is a hell of a lot going on underground.  Our tour guide Jimmy ‘the runner’ was a lovely man who had come straight from Greece about 46 years ago and hadn’t left. He was very interesting and clearly loved his town.  He took us to some places that he wasn’t supposed to and ran the tour half an hour over the specified time so he could show us more.  My favourite was the CP golf course.  How anyone could play golf on those rocks and find it relaxing is beyond me.  If you could beat that course you could play on any course in the world (including Mars). 

Another amazing site was the Italians house.  They didn’t give a hoot about how much money they had to pay for water as long as they had some olive trees, lemon trees, a water fountain, grass and a beautiful garden.  It was quite surreal seeing this lush oasis in the rocky out-back. 

Crocodile Harrys place was also a standout.  An eccentric man who clearly had a passion for women with big boobs.  His dugout was filled with women’s underwear and bras and had massive statues that he’d made of previous lovers.  He’d even made two of the statues into massive wine bottle type thing and when you poured yourself a glass it came straight out of her area. Classy.

 

Unfortunately for us we had booked nighttime mine tour with our caravan park earlier in the day and had to go over all the information again.  Louisa ran off towards the end to drink some wine and I shortly followed.  Neither of us have a great attention span and to have two tours in one day was a stupid idea.  However it is the first day that I have felt like a tourist and on holiday and I guess only a tour can give you that feeling.

 

Greatest song today – The song in the CP public toilets.

Animals hit – Louisa x1 (I think 2 secretly.)

            - Brooke x100 flies

Weird things found – Carols work apron in the kombi.

Funniest thing – Running away from Jimmy the runner when we saw him coming back to where we were having a beer.  The poor thing asked us if any of us were having a beer as he would join us but we couldn’t listen to him anymore after 5 hours.

Saddest moment – Finding out Crocodile Harry was dead and having to tell my brother-in-law who had said to me every time I’d seen him before the trip “Make sure you see Crocodile Harry – he’s a champ”.  He was devastated.

 

 

Day five: Coober Pedy Start time 6:50am. Uluru Arrival time 3:50pm.  Odometer reading: 84688

 

Anyone that knows me well knows I love my alone time.  This mornings alone time was awesome.

Louisa and I had discussed the night before that we needed to get an early start for our drive to Uluru.  We agreed that because I love getting a good start and because Louisa is a horrid morning person that I would get up and drive while she kept sleeping.

I set my alarm for 6:30am, packed up the car, ate a can of cold baked beans, put on my bare feet and took Sunny on a gentle early morning drive while the sun came up.  It was spectacular.  Carol would’ve loved it.  The colours were beautiful and the sun didn’t fully come up till 7:30am so I had a good half an hour of amazing, changing colours.

 

Louisa woke up with 50km’s to go and took over the driving as soon as we made it into Marla.  Our next stop after Marla was the Northern Territory border for photos and then quickly onto the Kulgera pub for a xxxxgold for me and a carlton stubby for Louisa.  We made a quick sandwich and another emergency C-section on the egg carton that had gone soggy and broken, spoiling an egg into the eski, and headed off to Uluru.

 

Nothing quite prepares you for the rock.  Especially when you see the wrong rock and think it’s Uluru.  We started cheering hysterically and filming before I started thinking how different it looked to last time I saw it and before Louisa finally said that it didn’t look like the pictures she’d seen.  Apparently it is the forgotten rock the local petrol station attendant told us.  Aptly named because neither of us can remember the name she told us.

Another 130km’s on and we finally saw Uluru.  After five big days of driving and ever changing scenery the rock stands out like – well, a big rock in the middle of the desert.  It is beautiful.  We managed to secure a powered site for two nights at the Ayers Rock Campground in the resort and took off for the sunset.  It wasn’t the best but it’s sure nice being here.

 

We had some more tuna pasta (only one more night of it left) and head out for the outback bar where we had two NT draughts and then headed home.

 

Greatest song today – Total eclipse of the heart – I was singing it for most of the morning as the sun was rising.

Animals hit – Louisa x1 (I think 2.)

            - Brooke x150 flies.

Funniest thing – Louisa saying “really?” in the biggest woggy accent I’ve ever heard come out of her Italian mouth.

Saddest moment – hitting my head on two separate occasions getting into the kombi.

 

Day six: Uluru walk.

 

We slept in till 7:20am and started to watch Blood Diamond the movie but became antsy after about an hour.  We made breakfast and packed a small lunch (I’m being ironic here because Louisa made me carry food for about twenty).  The Rock is about 20km’s from the campground and we arrived there at about 11am.

To cut a long story short we walked around the rock in two and a half hours stopping briefly for lunch and power walked the last 2km’s because I desperately needed the toilet.

 

Walking a refreshing 9km’s around the rock after five days of power driving was intense.  Louisa and I watched the end of Blood Diamond with our sun kissed faces and went into total ‘blah’ mode.  I drank about a half a bottle of wine and decided it would be a good time to update my blog.  Currently that’s what I’m doing while Louisa cleans out the eski.

Good times.

Connecting to the internet has been non-eventful and painful.  Any internet facility out here is either not working or not connecting. 

 

 

Day seven: Uluru to the Olgas, walk, then drive to Kings Canyon Start time 6:30am.  Kings Canyon Arrival time 4:00pm.  Odometer reading: 85180

 

We got up at 6:30am to catch the sunrise.  Only problem was the sun was already coming up.  We high-tailed it to the sunrise viewing point and watched as the colours changed on the rock and in the sky.

Then Louisa drove to the Olgas outlook point where we went about making breakfast.  I’ve decided baked beans on bread with butter is about as much as I can be bothered doing in the mornings.  Louisa goes the whole hog and makes eggs with avocado and toast, and then I clean it up while she’s eating.  Not sure about this deal. 

The toilets in the viewing area were my favourite – just a big drop hole.  So interesting, yet so uninteresting to examine.  Enough said.

 

The walk around the Olgas was a little rougher than Uluru and much more enjoyable.  It kept you on your toes.  Or off them.  It was about 8km’s and we chewed it up in under two hours. I now know that I get bored after about 5km’s and just want it over and done with.  City girl.

 

After the walk Louisa drove for another hour before losing the plot and I finally took over.  Lou climbed into the back for a snooze while I drove the final 160km’s with Veruca Salt and Hole playing loudly into my earphones.

 

We arrived at the Kings Canyon resort with not much petrol and paid for a powered site for the night so we can recharge our only links to the civilized world and went straight to the bar for a NT draught.  Although I am wary of sounding like an alcoholic – there is nothing better than a beer at the end of a 2hr walk and 4hr drive in the sun.  I even heard one of the grey nomads on the walk today eagerly talking about the taste of her first beer when she got back.

 

Can’t wait for bed.

 

 

Greatest song today – Hole, dying.

Funniest bit – My Aussie breakfast of baked beans while Louisa was making a full latte with the perculator.

Saddest bit – My breakfast compared to Lous.

 

 

Day eight:  Drive from Kings Canyon to Alice Springs via the unsealed Ernest Gilles Road.  Start time: 8:30am  Arrival time: 4:55pm.  Odometer: 85521

 

Louisa had a big crack em this morning and took herself away to the showers while I made myself some baked beans and packed up.

We left the camp about 9-ish and drove down to walk the 6km Kings Canyon walk.  I did this walk about 5years ago and remember it fondly apart from the first 300m which is basically straight up the side of the canyon = killer!  And it was just how I remembered it.  Luckily for us a film crew from England was filming a documentary and we had to stop half way for a breather.  No one was complaining about that.

The canyon walk is hard and beautiful and so worth the climb.  I won’t do it any justice in trying to explain the rock formations and colours so I’ll just say that if you get the chance to walk it, do it.  It beats the Uluru walk and the Olgas walk hands down.

 

After the walk it was my turn to drive us to the meteorite site and then supposedly onto Rainbow Valley reserve.  Louisa wanted to see the Rainbow Valley however I was happy to go straight to Alice.  I gave in but eventually won in the end.

The first hour of the drive was quite pleasant.  We even stopped at the Kings Creek petrol station and was surprised to get a decent coffee and see some camels and a sexy gold chopper about to take off with some tourists in it.  Then we looked on the map and decided we would indeed take the unsealed road as it was only 100kms long and would cut about an hour of our trip.

Wow.

Sunny did an awesome job shaking along that road.  The speed limit was 100km/h but the best Sunny ever got to was 80km/h.  All I can say is that thank god I played Sega Rally on my playstation as it prepared me for gravel driving and sand sliding.  I loved it.  Louisa was shitting her pants but I would’ve been too if she was driving.

It was hairy.

I can laugh about it now but it was pretty full on.  The funniest bit was when a 4xwheel drive hooned past me at about 110km/h allowing me to as they say, “eat his dust”.

The scenery was spectacular and both Louisa and I agreed it looked like an old western movie.  We both half expected some cowboys and Indians to ride past us with their bows and arrows. 

The Henbury meteorite reserve was 5kms from the end and we turned off to go have a look at the big hole in the ground. 

Next stop was Stuarts Well where Louisa informed me that there was a dingo that could play the piano and sing.  His name was dinky.  When we pulled in Dinky was asleep next to the piano and fast asleep.  That dingo was so old and fat there was no chance he was going to play, let alone stand up.  However there were pictures of his glory days and lots of people standing around cheering.  All I got was a “Don’t pat him, he might be having a grumpy day and bite you” from the owner.

Luckily for me the owner of the Stuarts Well pump house asked us where we were going.  When we told him we were going to Rainbow Valley he told us we had no chance of getting there because of such bad road conditions.  It was going to be another 25kms of shaky road in and out and he told us we had a good chance of getting bogged.

Yay! 

On to Alice we drove.

We arrived about 5pm and booked into Hevitree Gap campground where the lady gave us directions to ‘Red Centre Dreaming’ non powered campsite.  To be honest it was more like Brown Dirt Rubbish.  It was horrid and right next to a dumpster.  Unfortunately we’d booked for 2 nights but found a sneaky section away from the dumpster where we set up camp, then straight to the Tavern.

 

Greatest song today: All of the songs on the duke box at the Tavern.  Very country.

Funniest bit:  Me wetting my pats driving along the unpaved road.  Literally.

Saddest bit: As above.