Outback Camping

We spent 5 days camping in the outback in the center of Australia. It was a very interesting and a mostly enjoyable trip with lots of walks into the interior of the mountains  and around Uluru. We walked up Kings Canyon's "Heart Attack hill”--straight up on rocky terrain then walked for about 3 plus hours and most days did not get into camp until dark then fix dinner, eat, take showers (most days) and try to get to sleep. Wake up each day was before SUNRISE. We saw lots of sunrises and sunsets and they were extremely gorgeous. The sky was filled with stars at night and we slept all nights but one out in our swag (an Australian bedroll). The swag was comfortable except when it got cold because my sleeping bag was not very warm so I put on all my clothes and then it was OK.

Our best experience was when we went to see Craig an aborigine from the local area. He took us out in the bush and sat down brushed the sandy red ground and started drawing hieroglyphic symbols to tell the story of his aborigine belief in how his people and his clan, ‘the rainbow clan’, came to the area.

Most of our group swam most days but we chose to find places away from the group and just enjoy the quiet. One particular area was the Red Bank Gorge in the Western McDonnell Range. The Red Bank Gorge was one where you needed to swim back into to get to all the swimming holes. They say it was fantastic but we enjoyed just being..

We walked every day and the first 3 days were fairly strenuous  I thought I might lose some weight with all the walking and the camp food but don't think I lost that belly that I would like to.

When we got back to Alice Springs we decided to rent a car as it was less expensive to take in the sights of Alice Springs and also get to the airport. It was a good idea. We went to the Desert Park, the School of the Air and the Flying doctors. All of these really show  the Aussie ingenuity. 

We ate Emu, Camel, Kangaroo last night for dinner and it was all good--a good way to end our trip in the Red Center.

We bought some art aborigines  art, and mailed it backed to the states. It will be fun to unpack when we get home.