the northern territory

for our new years break 2004 we spent a week in the northern territory. we flew first into alice springs to spend a night. this pic pretty much sums it up! not a whole lot going on.

we took a bus ride out to uluru and on the way stopped at a few places. including one station with it's own dingo. here it is savagely attacking ren!

the resort at uluru is a bit of a weird place. everything is part of the resort and it's quite artifical, as this piece of lawn illustrates!

and here is what most people come to see. a big rock called uluru. it's interesting how it was made this is also the classic angle. never seen a photo from the other side? this is due to the photography restrictions because of the large number of sacred sites.

for the middle of nowhere there is a lot more plant life than i expected.

and i guess it all comes down to there being a quite a bit of water held around the base in pools.

we didn't climb the rock but we did walk the 10km around the base. it was a great walk, there is a lot of variety.

it was also pretty damn hot. we went in the morning and it was getting near 40 degrees.

luckily with our new found aboriginal skills we were able to determine which nuts and muesli were edible so we never got too hungry.

though we did get hot and needed to hide from the sun from time to time.

another great landmark not too far from uluru is the olgas, some more big rocks!

a common sight, especially since it was the holiday season, were others on tour. even in the middle of nowhere you can't get away from people.

we also went out to kings canyon for some more walking, around more rocks.

this day was the hottest, 45 before 10am. we drank, and needed, a LOT of water.

early jan 2004