OzBus11 - Daly Waters to Coober Pedy

We only spent a night in Daly Waters because that was all a simple backpacker needed. But what a night of fun we had, talking over beers in a flip/flop decorated beer garden, signing the obligatory T-Shirt proving we'd been there and hanging it next to a few other OzBus members. When our dinners had gone down, and we'd spent the last of our change on drinks, we headed for beds which for the most hardy of us tonight were in the form of Swags. These foam mattresses surrounded by tough canvas which you slot your sleeping bag in were a fab way of sleeping in the bush, Aussie style. I wondered how I'd cope with the amount of criers the Aussie bush has but as I lay my head down looking up at an amazingly large clear night sky, I drifted into a deep, natural sleep. But as usual though it was an early morning start and on the road at dawn heading for Alice (Alice? Alice? Who the f**k is Alice?) Springs.

We were on the road so early that we had to make a special stop for Breakfast. I'm not a fan of rush breakies and was not digging it. The road seemed a blur of large termite mounds and endless roadhouse stops for lunch until we passed a typical outback oddity. A roadhouse dedicated to the sighting of Aliens with a larger than life model outside tempting road weary drinkers in. By 5.30pm though we reached something that perked me up. We were about to cross the Tropic of Capricorn and we stopped for a photo op. Again the marvels of Australia hit me as I thought how amazing it was for an entire country to have it's own tropic! How can you even compare Britain to something like that?

An hour later we had reached Alice Springs. Out of the dusty orange of the outback bush appeared a pop up city of concrete, cars and visible Indigenous peoples. That night we were treated to a rare night in a hostel and made our way to Bo's Saloon for dinner where you could find good steak, a caged snake and the rest of the backpackers in town. Presumably we had all come for the same reason – to see if anyone would look up where we were on the internet as they stream their CCTV (in colour) on their website for anyone, anywhere in the world to check out. Only slightly creepy....

I went to bed earlier than others as I had to get up super early the next morning to phone the parents. I only mention this as it was in my diary as something I did which I presume meant it was an important event as I might have not have spoken to them for a while – too much fun on the road. We had a fairly luxurious morning as it happened, checking out at 10am, ambling through the town only to leave at 1pm. 4 hours later we had already arrived at our next campsite, King's Canyon. It was a lovely easy day compared to the amazing drives we had been doing through Australia so far and previously in Indonesia.

We were at this campsite to see the amazing rock formation of King's Canyon and walk it which meant the next morning we had eaten breakie and left camp by 6am. Our guide Mark was doing a super job at giving us the speal but I'm not great walking a little bit then stopping and listening then walking a bit more so I went off and did the walk myself. Afterwards I learnt that people thought that that was not a particularly good idea seeing as how easy it for peeps to get into difficulty on their own out in the Aussie terrain and unforgiving climate. I argue that I notified the proper authority of my intention to go on alone and thought should have been aired at that point, had water with me, it was a guided walk and there were a fair few others doing the same. I just can't stand being hearded around sometimes, I need to get out and do it in my own time, on my own terms.

I had a good hour back at the walk's base waiting for the troops to arrive and by 11am we had left, watching the other backpacker bus tour companies roll on in. I was beginning to gauge just how big the specific 'backpacker' industry in Australia was. No rest for the intrepid OzBusketeers though as we rolled our way onwards to the highlight of our outback tour – Uluru, the geological formation formerly known as Ayers Rock. Arriving at the campsite at 4.30pm it was dumping our stuff and then jumping back on board to the official sunset viewing area. Official because it was like a Backpacker bus Tour Operator coffee meeting in a car park with Uluru framed by the stretched sky in the distance. Yes it was beautiful and sunsets are my 'thing' just as sunrises are. For me sunsets are a spiritual reflection on the past...... yes, spiritual, deal with it. And I always make a point of seeing the sunrise on the longest day to mark another point in time, the joy of daylight. But at Uluru, surrounded by photo opportunities for Facebook, computer hard drives, maybe some of them would be lucky enough to be viewed in generations to come, I felt inside like the moment was just another moment for a scrapbook. And I was saddened a little that it didn't meet the enormity that the rock itself possesses over the landscape.

The next morning saw us up before dawn to see the rock in much the same way as the evening before but from the opposite side. It did look different that morning, and the sunrise painted Uluru in many different colours in a way an onlooker can note. Better. Once light, we parked up and had a little talk by Mark of the cultural significance of it including a kind request not to walk up it if it was allowed that day. Now, I don't get this part of how Uluru park operates. It is done so by mostly indigenous people to the area who have it in their culture disrespectful to climb onto the rock yet the sheer face climb on non windy days is still in operation and people chose to do this. I have visited Muslim mosques covered up to the nines, disrespected as a woman in Iran and Pakistan because their culture requires me to be so and I come to a Western country deliberately choosing to disrespect a culture? It was illegal for me to walk into a Mosque without a headscarf in Iran so why not ban the climb in Australia. Maybe it's free speech, western living, I don't know but for me their was no choice. If it was disrespectful in Aboriginal culture and Uluru was an Aboriginal sacred sight then I was a guest on that land and had no choice but to adhere to their customs.

I guess some of us were intrigued as to who would and wouldn't climb. A few of us had our own thoughts which being the multicultural, free thinking group we were, aired the night before at dinner but in the end we weren't to know as the walk was closed due to winds. In a way I'm glad that happened, perhaps a view of mine on someone would have changed for the worse and tension would have been felt between some of us more vocal in our beliefs amongst OzBus11. After a very pleasant walk around the rock which is encourage by park rangers we visited the Cultural center which was a glorified gift shop. Not to say that it was a bad thing, I've been to a fair number of gift shops in my time and experience has given me rating expertise. Uluru information center was a freshly developed site presumably with sustainability in mind. Or at least the space gave off that air of thought. A coffee and a walk through later (no gifts tempted me, another skill I've picked up from over exposure to gift shops, I've seen it all before).

At 12pm we had lunch and we had a rare 'free' afternoon. A few of us caught the campsite shuttle into Uluru resort. Yes it's like an Australian version of Disneyland. A pop-up town in the middle of the desert with all the amenities at hyped up prices to suit. It was excruciatingly hot that day. I remember because I was positively relieved to be in the complex with temperature control. At 4pm we were all called back to get on the bus to visit Kata Tjuta The Olgas. We were back a fraction before sunset and most of us raced up to a high point by camp to view it.

The following morning we left Uluru and stopped in Marla for lunch. By a reasonable time in the afternoon we had arrived in the mining town of Coober Pedy. This is another favourite on the backpacker trail and we were introduced to our lodgings that night as a massive dorm in a cave. It sounds rustic but it was actually more geometric in layout. The 'cave' was section off into mini dorms of 2 bunk beds separated from the main aisle which was wide enough for motor traffic by curtains. It was an odd setting but it worked. Because it had been dug out of the ground the room temperature was constant during day and night. In fact most residents in Coober Pedy lived in such a way, in houses dug out from the ground. After dumping our stuff we had a tour of one which had been recreated as part of an Opal mine tour. It was interesting, never even knew Opals were found in Oz. I had recently lost one of my pearl earings and as I only ever travel with one pair I decided to purchase a pair of Opal earings as my new set and momento of the occasion.

Suddenly I wanted all the momentos I could lay my hands on. We sat down to dinner in the only place in town we could which was a pizza joint. We were all sitting together opposite an excitable group of scouts/school kids. Everyone was having a 'swell' time but I felt unusually somber. I looked around carefully at the 26 faces I had been traveling with for the past 3 months, trying to remember everything we had been through together, trying to capture that moment in the pizza place in my mind. Tomorrow we would be leaving for Adelaide and would already being saying goodbyes to some OzBusketeers.