Hey which way?

Uluru. Ayer's Rock. One in the same. It's the picture that you will undoubtedly see when you go to Outback Steakhouse. But, unlike Outback Steakhouse, it is actually really incredible. (Side note- I have yet to come across the elusive "bloomin' onion". Apparently, they are not found much in the wild these days).

Back to the story. So as you come to Uluru National Park (or whatever it's called, can't quite remember but Uluru is in it), you will see many signs discouraging climbing Uluru. It is a sacred Aboriginal site. At first, I thought I wouldn't climb it because it would be disrespectful, but once I got pretty close to it, I discovered that not only was there a chain to aid in the climbing, but instructions on the best way to climb (drink a litre of water an hour, wear rubber-soled shoes, sunscreen, hat, blah blah blah). Furthermore, there is talk of closing the climb down because one bad exotic apple had to do a strip tease on the top of it (also, 35 people have died climbing it). So, I went for it.

Hannah ran into a little bit of trouble wearing UGG boots and a mini skirt, and turned around nearly half way up. Unbeknownst to her or the rest of us, this was actually the hardest part. The second half is not nearly as steep. Terry, being such a nice guy, walked her all the way down and then went all the way back up again...in slippers.

This is a German cool cat that I saw sprinting past me on the way up in his button down, sweater vest, skinny jeans, and, of course, wayfarers.

The hike took us about 2 hours, and we all made it alive, except for the group water bottle which I dropped in the first 20 minutes. God rest its soul.

Driving to the Kata tjutas, or the Olgas, we came across some camels. I was pretty excited about this. You american readers out there may not know this (I didn't), but there are actually more camels in Australia than there are in Arab countries. In fact, Australia exports live camels to Saudi Arabia. Ha!

We took a quick look at the Olgas and moved on because we were pretty whipped from climbing Uluru. We camped just south of Alice Springs, hoping to get work as carnies at the Alice Springs Carnival. Unfortunately, there was not enough work so the next day Tannah and Milly (Terry and Hannah and Mitch and Kelly, collectively), had to part ways. :(

Mitch and I stopped at Daly Waters for the "famous burgers" that Lonely Planet talked about. This is when I began to start wondering if Lonely Planet writers actually went to the places they wrote about. Here is a picture of a lorikeet at Daly Waters.

When we got to Pine Creek, an old gold mining town, we had some Coopers at the hotel-motel (which lonely planet hardly mentioned), and then checked out the lonely planet favorite- an overpriced flashy backpackers which lacked any tap beer. gross. We tried camping at the Roadhouse, but there was absolutely no wind and the mosquitoes kept buzzing in our ears so we couldn't sleep a wink. We packed up at 2 am and decided to drive straight through to Jabiru.

dry as a dingo's paw

At the moment, I am in Jabiru, NT, Australia, at Mitch's crib. We got here a few days ago after our trip from Townsville to Uluru and up to the NT. If you would like to see where I have stopped along the trip, this link-http://www.spotadventures.com/user/profile?user_id=57493- will take you to a google map with all the spots on it!So, Mitch and I left Friday, June 25th and headed west. We camped a few hundred kms from Townsville. A little tentative to use the toilets at first, we eventually discovered there were not actuallybees in the toilets...

We met up with Terry and Hannah the next morning at our campsite. We made it to Mt. Isa that night, and were forced to stay because of car trouble. Some scenery of Queensland outback...

After we had the break pads tightly screwed on (phew), we continued on.

We stopped at Camooweal for a little R&

R, but timing is everything, and the police happened to drive behind terry's unregistered car. Terry, the prince of Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea, is a nice guy, but he either has no need for legitimate license plates in the islands, or remains on "island time", and couldn't pencil in the time to get one. Fortunately, the policewoman was very nice, and let us go as long as Terry pinkie-promised to get a license plate ASAP. Naturally, we got right on that.

Camooweal is also where Queensland ends and the Northern Territory begins. According to Mitch, an NT resident (which explains a lot), NT also stands for "Not today, not tomorrow." I didn't really believe him until I saw my first territorian. I wish I had a picture but I was absolutely terrified to shove a Nikon in his face and ask for his picture, considering he was almost 7 feet tall, wearing a shirt that said "If you don't like me, then fuck you", and had on ridiculously short shorts and boots.

We stopped at the Barkley Homestead just before dust, and got to meet Cocky, who apparently bites. After some good arguing about a campsite, we finally settled on one just off the road, a little bit past the Barkley.

The next morning, we left quite early and made it all the way to the Barrow Creek. On the way, we stopped in Tennant Creek and Ti-Tree. Not much to them, just little gas stations along the way. Plenty of people and dogs hanging about, both drinking green cans.

That night, we camped just before Barrow Creek and climbed this little plateau and watched the sunset. It was a little steeper than I had hoped, and I drank a tad too much wine at the top, which made getting down interesting. No broken bones, though. Shocker. (Not that kind, Katherine)

The next day, we went to Alice springs and stayed at Annie's Place, some hip and edgy backpackers. We ended up staying two nights there because of the weather and what-not. We got to see a show outside of the grocery store on our first day. Some girls were brawling in the middle of the street. One girl was curled up in a ball on the curb, and another girl was kicking the shit out of her. Everyone just stared, including me. Weird-for me at least- but alice springs in the stabbing capital of the world. "Little stab, one time". This was the court statement of an aboriginal man who accidently stabbed his wife to death. Apparently, little stabs are common in the aboriginal culture. But this poor fellow happened to stab his wife in the wrong place and she died from only one little knife jab. To all those one-time stabbers out there, be warned.

That's a lot for one time, so I'll continue tomorrow with our journey to uluru and up to Jabiru, the heart of kakadu!