June Travels

Well June has come and gone and we have made the most of it, not because it is the best weather to travel in, or has the best deals of the year, but mainly because with July comes busy season and I'm not sure how much day light I'll be seeing in the next three to four months. So yes, we made the most of June.


It started out with a trip to Perth - the most isolated big city in the World. Adelaide is the closest city to it and is still a four hour flight. In Perth we toured around the CBD and saw all the 'sights' thanks to the walking tour ap on iPhone. Its bigger than Adelaide but still not a big city by American definition. The second day we took a ferry out to a place called Rottnest Islands. Named after an explorer found the Quokas on the island and thought they were big rats. They are actually really cute and part of the marsupial family (same as kangaroos). They don't allow cars on the island, so to Mark's delight, we hired some bikes to get around.



We also visited Freemantel (Freo as they refer to it). It the port town of Western Australia, and known for its market. But to tell the truth the market was about 1/5 of the size of the one in Adelaide so I'm not sure what the fuss was about. The one place I did enjoy in Freo was the Little Creatures Brewery. Good beer, good food and good people. Great place to spend the afternoon.


After our trip to Perth we managed to get everything organized and headed into the centre of Australia. Which doesn't sound that adventurous, but it did take us 5 days to get there. We stopped at some interesting places along the way - which was the point of the trip. First stop was Clare Valley, one of the many wine regions in SA. Stopped for some lunch and a nice glass of wine before getting to Port Agusta for the night (luckily it was just the night and we headed out early in the morning).

After Port Agusta we drove a good 6 hours to Coober Peedy where the people are crazy. The only thing to do in Coober Peedy is mine - and mining for opals nonetheless. I don't particularly enjoy opals but it was the Americans for WWII who started buying them and creating the demand for the stone. So an entire town was built to mine opals and they love what they do. We had a few tours of the mines and took in a show of how the mining machines work (all home made in Coober Peedy). Due to the fact that Coober Peedy is one of the hottest places in Australia most dwellings are built underground. So like most other people who visit we got an underground hotel room. Which really didn't feel that different to any other hotel room that I've experienced in my days (except for all the rock around and the non-squareness of the room).



Along side Coober Peedy is the Dingo Fence. The longest man made thing ever build (longer than the Great Wall of China). The fence was built to keep the Dingos (wild dogs) on the north side where it is cattle country to protect the sheep on the south side. It runs from SA to NSW.

After a good time in Coober Peedy we headed to the Big Rock - known as Ayers Rock or Uluru.

It is a very sacred site to the Aboriginals, which is understandable considering how immense the rock is when compared to anything else around. Mark and I took the walk around the walk and 10k later (about 6 miles) we made it back to the beginning. The first night we watched the sun set and then got up early the next morning and headed out to see the sun rise. Unfortunately, mother nature was not in our favour and it was a bit cloudy to get a good sunrise.

That afternoon we headed to Kings Canyon which is a up and coming tourist attraction. There is only one place to stay for cabins, campers, vans and those of us with tents - so yeah, in other words a caravan park. But the park did have a bar with drinks and entertainment so I counted us lucky. In the morning we headed to the actual canyon and did the hike around. Like most of our camping vacations it rained almost the entire time we were at Kings Canyon - but didn't detour us at all.


On the fifth day we made it to Alice Spring, which was probably the most unexciting place to visit. We had a list of 5 restaurants and the first two didn't have any room so we were getting a bit nervous but luckily got in at the third. Which about sums up our time in Alice Springs - nothing was opened in the morning due to the town celebrating Territory Day (Alice Springs is in the Norther Territory so not an actual state of Australia), so we headed to the airport for our flight home.

All in all a great trip and worth taking the time to do it (because I'm not sure I'll be back there any time soon).