It's Boxing Day here in Oz, (that's the day after Christmas for all the Americans out there) and while Dom watches the Dallas Cowboys I thought I would finish up our Uluru/Alice Springs recap so that I can delve into the Jamaica trip from more than a month ago and our weekend trip houseboating on the Hawkesbury River and also tell you about the Opera House...all before we leave tomorrow for Melbourne (I can almost guarantee that's not going to happen, but it's a nice thought). So, here we go...
First up, just as we were heading out of Alice Springs we saw a kangaroo! Yes we've seen kangaroos before but never quite as close as this! And after seeing all of the other wild animals on our road trip and not a single kangaroo...we really needed to see a kangaroo to make the trip complete. We even managed to capture the moment on video. Unfortunately Blogger does not want to load my video...so this picture where the kangaroo is barely visible will have to suffice. She's up at the top of the pic between the rocks, can you see her?
The road trip back was much less exciting as we took the shorter route and managed to do the whole thing in just over 4 hours. Here are the highlights:
Emus at a petrol station.
A giant frilled lizard and echidna...at the same petrol station. Because why WOULDN'T there be a giant frilled lizard and echidna at a petrol station.
A salt lake.
The Uluru lookalike.
More camels.
To be fair it was probably the same herd as we saw on the trip out, not more camels, just the same camels again.
This is a dingo. It's a crap picture I know, but I promise in the very middle of the picture is a dingo.
And here's the car after the roadtrip, not nearly as many bugs as we thought there should be.Our last night in Uluru we decided to do the "Sounds of Silence" dinner, remember when we went to Port Douglas and did the "Flames of the Forest" dinner? Well, this was essentially the same thing. Dinner under the stars while watching the sun set behind Uluru. Instead of an aboriginal telling a bedtime story this time it was the most Australian guy I've ever seen playing a digeridoo.
Have you ever seen anyone look more quintessentially Australian than this guy?
Champers at sunset.
Totally worth it if you're ever in Uluru, they give you all sorts of weird Australian fare like kangaroo and crocodile and give you too much alcohol. Awesome.
As we got ready to head off the next morning we took one last trip out to Uluru before we headed back to the airport.
A closeup of the walk you can do up the side of Uluru.
And our final look. Bye bye Uluru.
I'm in Canberra and we see literally about 25-50 kangaroos every day on the way to work...though they are always in mobs so we see a group here and there. Anyway, there is a beach in Bateman's Bay called Pebbly Beach where they have kangaroos that are wild (called surfing kangaroos), but have been tamed by the amount of people that come to see them. You can literally walk up to them and pet/hug them. You still have to be careful because they are wild, but there were heaps of them on the beach and we got to pet a bunch of them. It was amazing. We stayed in a camp ground where the king parrots and rainbow lorakettes come and feed out of your hand...it was an amazing weekend with wildlife! If you get a chance, you should go visit, it was great!
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