Thursday May 22, 2014

We had breakfast, packed our swags and gear away and headed out to watch the sunrise over Uluru.  It was a little overcast but there was some nice cloud movement over Uluru.

Because the forecast was for possible showers, James decided on two shorter walk rather than one longer walk of 7.5 kms.  It was also a lot easier on the group, as they are not used to long walks and if it rained.  The two walks were in the Kata Tjuta, a very beautiful area and easy walking.

James gave us information on how Uluru and Kata Tjuta were formed – geology lessons as well on this trip. I really enjoyed this area, each day is better than the previous day.

As we walked back to the bus, I chatted to the group from Hong Kong.  Vince was telling me about places to visit when we are in China.

We went back to the campsite for lunch of Tortillas, where Vince was able to google the places he had told me about. The Stone Forest in Kumming, Yunnan Province and Jiuzhagou in Szechaun. The Stone Forest looks stunning, we have added this as a place to visit while we are in China. The food in Szechuan is very spicy, there is a pepper called fatou (sp?) which sends your lips and tongue numb. Vince said I should try it.  I don\’t eat really spicy food, but we will have to see when we get there.

On the way to our camp site  James, Ralf and a couple of the guys from Taiwan gathered firewood for the fire tonight.

Kings Creek cattle station where we are staying tonight is small by Australian standards 813,000 acres with about 2,000 head of cattle.  It also has camp sites and caters to tourism.  We are sleeping in our swags again tonight but inside canvas tents.  This is quite a large 3 person tent, very comfortable for 3 people and their gear.  Not like ours which although it is supposed to be a 3 man tent, is really good for 2 people with gear. We are not sharing tonight, just the two of us in our body bags (swags).

Ralf went up to the lookout to take photos of the sunset.

On Ralf\’s return from the lookout he spotted paw prints and confirmed with James that they were actually Dingo prints.  He hadn\’t noticed them on the way out.

After a nice hot shower I asked James if he needed help preparing dinner.   Some of the girls had already helped James cut up the potatoes and onions.  The potatoes were cooked in the fire along with the damper bread which I made.  Damper is similar to bannock, flour and water and baked in the fire, except we added garlic and cheese, everyone really liked it.  The BBQ consisted of snags (sausages), chicken kebabs and roo steak, potatoes and damper.  Damper was the traditional drovers bread.

We sat around the bonfire for quite a while looking at the sky and chatting.  One of the guys from Taiwan gave Ralf and I some sparklers.  I really loved sparklers when I was younger.

The night sky was awesome.  Theresa from Austria was able to identify the southern cross for us.  We were also able to identify Mars from the “Night Sky” ap.

The Asians in our group were amazed by the night sky, as Ralf and I have been throughout our trip in the southern hemisphere.  They said that in Hong Kong and in Taiwan, they are lucky if they can see more than 3 stars in the sky because of the light pollution.

Another early start tomorrow to walk Kings Canyon.