Outback

The past week in the Australian outback (well as far as we dared to venture into remote Australia with three little girls in a hired campervan) was just amazing.

We started in a relaxed way by taking the Ghan long distance train from Adelaide to Alice Springs. We got on the train as backpackers and had to spend the 25-hour journey in a so-called Red Day/Night Seater (the girls wondered we just couldn't travel in the Gold or even Platinum section (answer: because we could probably fly home for the price of a Platinum private cabin)), which wasn't really that hard. We enjoyed the scenery that passed by or window, a nice meal in the restaurant carriage, we played a few games and the girls even did a little bit of homework!



The next morning we celebrated Cleo's fourth birthday while we were marvelling at the sunrise during a stop at Marla.



She had muffins and presents and that night we had a great dinner at an Italian restaurant in Alice Springs.
In Alice we visited the Desert Park where we had a very interesting talk about Aboriginal life in the desert.






Finally I got to visit the Royal Flying Doctors Service, something that brought back memories from all those episodes watching with my mum about life in Coopers Crossing. I am still amazed by the work they do out there.


The girls liked the 'School of the Air' (long distance learning for children living in the outback) where we could view a live teaching session with children who sometimes lived 900 or 1600 km from Alice Springs! The School of the Air teaches about 125 children in a classroom of 1.3 million square km (that's roughly an area twice the size of France)!

As a birthday present for Cleo we made a camel sunset trip in the West MacDonnell Ranges.






Of course we couldn't skip a trip to Uluru (Ayers Rock) when we are 'around'. A detour of about 1100km brought us to this magnificent national park where we saw the enormous rock as well as the huge boulders (the Olgas) at Kata Tjuta. We didn't climb the rocks as, although not forbidden, it is discouraged as the indigenous people and owners of the area don't want it as the rock is sacred.
But we did a few walks and had front row seats during sunset and sunrise when Uluru is at its best.


Yesterday we left Uluru and started to make our way to Darwin (only about 2000km.....).

It's a real experience driving through the so called Red Centre. You can drive for km without seeing a single car and every 100 km there is a road house where you can get petrol, food and a camping site. Today we had to refill our petrol three times! (mainly because we just wanted to be sure that we would not run out, but also because we covered 700 km (with three girls in the back crafting reading and an occasional game on the tablet)).
We have spend a few nights now on rest areas along the highway where you can camp for 24 hours.

The temperatures are definitely rising now, the next few days we will be getting into the low 30's.