When you think of “The Outback”, what comes to your mind? PLEEEAAAASE don’t say the cheesy American chain restaurant with the Bloomin’ Onion horror show that will clog your arteries and make you gain ten pounds in one sitting while reading the menu to see if you can order a “Shrimp on the Barbie” and a Fosters.
We had a general idea of what to expect on our travel through this vast area of Australia, but we had no idea how diverse this landscape really is. We thought about it but we’ll spare you the geography lesson of how Australia came to be…skipping the separation of the prehistoric super continent and the migration of the continents to their present locations, the importance of India sliding past Australia and the Alice Springs orogeny. We will also not mention that Australia used to be covered by rain forest until relatively recent volcanic activity literally changed the landscape. And we certainly won’t mention that the absolute isolation of Australia for millions of years is central to the present flora and fauna of this magnificent island continent.
We joined an overland camping trip that would take us from Alice Springs all the way to the South in Melbourne over 11 days. In this post, we will talk about our experiences for the first 7 days from Alice Springs to Adelaide and the 24 miles we trekked during this segment of our trip.
This been our hardest blog posting to date. We didn’t know how to even get started…how to organize our thoughts…trust us, there have been many false starts. It is just not possible to summarize how wonderful our journey was into words or to somehow translate what we witnessed via two dimensional pictures. What follows are some of our favorite memories and highlights from our time in The Outback.
The Hiking –
We hiked Northern Australia’s King’s Canyon – formed 450 million years ago. We started on the canyon floor and trekked up 500 steep steps to the rim of the canyon and walked the perimeter. It was beautiful especially since we started our hike at first light. A smaller version of the Grand Canyon in the US but certainly no less stunning. One of our favorite elements from the hike was passing by rippled rocks, which were formed by the sea covering the rocks hundreds of millions of years ago.
We walked the perimeter of Uluru (aka Ayers Rock) at sunrise. We did not climb it; Uluru is highly sacred to the local Aboriginal people and climbing it is considered very disrespectful. The park service has thankfully decided to close the climb in October 2019 and it’ll sadly be quite busy until that date. The climb isn’t easy, there is only a cable to hold onto as a railing. Apparently, some people get scared once on the top and have to be assisted down by park rangers. We did hear another story of 3 people that got stranded – so afraid to climb back down that a helicopter was called all the way from Alice Springs (a 3-hour drive away) and they were then charged $30,000 each for this service. YIKES!
The sunrise at Uluru is nothing short of magnificent. We had an opportunity to visit at sunset and again the next morning during sunrise. The rock face changes color every few minutes based on the sun’s position and the cloud formations – in just a few minutes you can watch as the rock transitions from a purple to a fluorescent orange. Uluru itself is a monolith filled with iron ore, so the orange color is really rust or oxidation. Where the surface of the rock has been eroded, one can see the non-rusted, gray colored rock. Very cool!
A member of a local Aboriginal tribe took us on a short walk around Uluru and demonstrated their forms of art, construction of tools and hunting and gathering techniques. She showed us a type of fig tree, while alerting us to which fruit to pick and eat. Even more amazing was her guided walking tour of shallow caves and her interpretations of the art work on the walls dating back as much as 25,000 years ago – art that told important religious stories and others that taught young boys how to hunt.
Finally, we walked down into a gorge at the rock face near a watering hole. It’s the only permanent water source near Uluru and as such is highly sacred to the Aboriginal people. When the wind was still and our voices silent, one couldn’t help be moved by the serenity and the sense of importance of this place.
Near Uluru is an even more spectacular formation…Kata Tjuta, which is a series of domed rock formations. Uluru is beautiful, don’t get us wrong, but Kata Tjuta is a little bit natural wonder and a little bit Dr. Seuss. It’s unlike anything we’ve seen before. Even during our sunrise hike at Uluru, we kept looking for Kata Tjuta. So by all means, come for Uluru but stay for Kata Tjuta. We think any time that you spend there will be well worth it.
Lastly, on our final day of the trip, we spent time hiking in the Flinder’s Ranges and Alligator Gorge in Mount Remarkable National Park. We had the pleasure of walking through dried our riverbeds with amazing rock formations and we were fortunate to see MANY MANY kangaroos and wallabies. Roaming free and grazing. It’s quite impressive to see the full height and stature of a full grown adult male Red Kangaroo.
Camping –
Australians love to camp. Give an Aussie a 3 day weekend and a good many will pack up the car and drive out into the bush. They sleep in a swag bag directly under the stars. A swag bag is a canvas cocoon with a built-in mattress pad. Unroll the swag on the ground, zip open the main pouch and snuggle inside of it with your sleeping bag. Zip up the main pouch and only your face is exposed to the elements. It was super cozy and gave us the best view in the world – millions of stars and planets with no ambient light for miles and miles. We slept in swags one night under the stars; the other camping nights were in permanent tent cabins.
Food was basic, but plentiful. The campsites did have basic kitchen facilities for cooking. It was great dining under the stars with just a few candles!
It gets chilly in the outback at night – most nights for us it was down to 30-35 degrees Farenheit. During portions of our bus travel, we would stop by the side of the road and collect fire wood (careful not to pick up pieces hiding deadly snakes and spiders). This served us well at night in the cold and served as a wonderful communal gathering point after meals were complete and dishes were clean.
We even learned a very popular campfire song, as demonstrated by our tour leader…
Meeting the locals –
The pace of life is much different for those that chose to live in the outback. We got a good taste of their lifestyle when we stayed one night in William Creek. It is known to be the smallest town in all of Australia, with a current population of 12. Seriously, see the photo below. They update it with chalk as needed in their pub. It’s located on the largest cattle station (Americans would call this a ranch) in Australia. The town has a pub (noted as one of the world’s most remote), an airport (for scenic flights to Uluru), two motels and a campground. We had a great time hanging out with the few locals in the pub.
The locals in William Creek are very trusting. While at the bar, the manager asked if we had the time in our schedule to deliver their mail to a local processing station many miles down the road!! We didn’t but that’s quite the ask.
Traveling overland through the Outback –
Our group of campers traveled by a rugged bus. It needs all-wheel drive to navigate some of the unpaved parts of the Outback. Most of the travel days were long (five-six hours of driving per day were common), but we got to see quite a bit. Many times per day, our tour guide would slow the bus down as we would see emus running along the road and kangaroos hopping around in the distance.
We traveled the famous Oodnadatta Track for two days of our travel. This is an off road, seriously bumpy experience. We felt like we were in a blender for hours when we finally stopped. Seriously, this video does not do justice.
We also came across random roadside art. It reminded us of what one might expect to see at Burning Man. Basically, creating this art is what the locals do for entertainment. Importantly, the art work re-purposes existing scrap metal.
Have you ever been on a boat, in the middle of a large body of water and realized just how big the world is? This is how we felt driving through the outback. The landscape is so vast – you feel like you are on another planet.
Sleeping Underground –
Yes, we really did sleep underground. We stopped over in a town called Coober Pedy for the night. Coober Pedy has a population of about 1,800 people – all living there to mine opals (this is the Opal capital of the world) or support those who do. It gets extremely hot in the summer – 131 F. Given the extreme temperatures, the town has largely been built underground. No, not meters under the earth – but simply built into hillsides and in some cases in abandoned opal mines. The homes stay cool year-round. We visited an opal mine and a museum. We also visited an underground home, which had plenty of fresh air and was appointed very nicely. We looked for an underground pub but couldn’t find one. Those are all above ground apparently, as are the grocery stores and restaurants.
We stayed overnight in a hostel built into a hillside and were extremely comfortable. Here’s a photo S with some friends in the underground hostel.
The next morning we toured the town further and visited an underground church. The church was huge and carved very nicely. We can’t imagine how much time and skill it takes to work with such hard rock and produce such delicate work. Kudos to the artists!
Up Close Wildlife –
We hiked through The Dutchman’s Stern Conservation Range and saw MANY kangaroos. We didn’t get many photographs because the kangaroos were too far away.
In Coober Pedy, we visited Josephine’s Gallery and Kangaroo Orphanage. This sweet couple takes in kangaroos, echidna and other animals in distress and raise them. We had an opportunity to feed two kangaroos and pet a two-week-old kangaroo joey while he was being fed. As a side note, kangaroos are lactose intolerant, so only special formula can be given to them.
What does one feed adult kangaroos? Any guesses? We fed them peanuts and wasabi peas. The kangaroos approach slowly, steady your hands with theirs and eat the wasabi peas right out of your palm. It’s really pretty cool.
Camping in the exact center of Australia –
We spent the night in Erldunda. This small rest stop/town is known for being the exact center point of Australia – both north-south and east-west. They have a few Emus in residence and a cute little pub – which we, ahem, did spend some time in.
Sadly It’s All Over
Well, we hope that it we did it justice. We met a lot of great people on our tour and had a great tour leader. As you can tell from the video, she really gives it her all. Her passion for the Outback was truly infectious. We hope to come back to Australia some day and clean up the bigger parts that we missed.
We weighted our time in Australia disproportionately towards the Outback and it turned out to be a good decision. We missed the rain and the extreme heat and still got to enjoy the best parts. The only regret from our time in The Outback is that we didn’t have more time to spend. We could easily have spent more time in the reserves and conservancies waiting patiently for passing kangaroos, wallabies and emus. We needed more moments of introspection at late night campfires with nothing but the countless stars and planets to interrupt our thoughts. Hundreds of shooting stars. Unfettered views of the Milky Way. Wondrous natural formations. Totally unique fauna and flora. We were so sad to return to city life.
We’re not done with Oz yet. We have two more posts coming of our time in Australia. One on the Great Ocean Road from Adelaide to Melbourne. And a final post summarizing our time in Melbourne and Sydney. Stay tuned for both.
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