Sail away...sail away... Sail away

So can you hear Enya singing that song? I can and we have just endured the boarding process and are waiting to go on the Liberty of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean ship departing from Brisbane to Fiji. 

We are so fortunate to have Australian passports and have good health to be able to travel. Further more this trip is a bonus as our last cruise took us back home. If you don't know this story ask me later! 

Big thanks to Dad for driving us here and must thank google maps for ensuring we went to the right place. It is always interesting to navigate unknown roads from the back seat and this was indeed an interesting drive. 

I look forward to journaling my trip away and know limits to wifi may mean posts are done in bulk as I access the Internet!

For those of you wondering I am so far the only person wearing Jamberry nails 

Book Review - "I love you more"

While away I started reading this book by Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott. It was full of great quotes and strategies that help you manage relationships in life! 

http://www.lesandleslie.com/

Quotes I like

All beginnings are lovely. French proverb

We have been poisoned by fairy tales. Anais Nin

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens and 90% how I react to it - we are in charge of our attitudes. Chuck Swindoll

People are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be. Abraham Lincoln

Our greatest fear is not that we will discover that we are inadequate, but that we will discover that we are powerful beyond measure. Nelson Mandela

Many of life's failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up. Thomas Edison

New skills

XYZ formula - in situation X, when you do Y, I feel Z

Common subtle saboteurs today - busyness, irritation, boredom, drift, debt and pain

Tools to battle bad things - ownership, hope, empathy, forgiveness, commitment

I like making improvements in my world and I hope you like some of these too!

Dalhousie Springs to Coober Pedy - opal capital of the world...

Tuesday finds us on the road at 8:55am. We are already travelling 20km faster than we were last night at 7:30pm and at least in daylight we can see the track. We are not even travelling for 4min and we come across our first bog hole whole Peter and Tim both navigated their way through - the remaining cars took a side track which was safer. Having made our way through quite a wet track we find ourselves waiting for a car that can not get through. This gives us a chance to clean the windows! Peter gets on the radio to check who gets through it all and finally all seven cars are off and running. I think Tim proved his point and we will be the whip in the the convoy to Dalhousie Springs.

The track to Dalhousie Springs in the day time to easy to read and we find the turn off and have 61km to go so at 9:11am you would imagine this to take an hour if we can do 100km/hour on this dirt track. After stopping three times to tell people about the lack of diesel fuel we arrived just after 10:30am.

What a stark difference this environment is at Dehousie Springs. It is a pond that gets heated by the Great Artesian Basin by the 80+ mound springs. The water is filled with minerals and when the water evaporates it leaves a white cover on the dirt. The water is about 34-38° and up to 14m deep with a flow rate of 160L/sec at a hot 43°. I swam beside fairy martins that were flying around me skimming the spring surface and then flying off to the trees. Tim and I also saw a long nosed dragon in the carpark. There are also goby fish in there that nibble your toes. A free natural pedicure, dosen't get better than this!

We decided to relax here for a while and had lunch here too! What a hot day and a hot swim we had - Robyn and Leah have been saying how nice it is first thing in the morning and late at night but we can always come back...infact I love my spa at home so much that I think I can tick this place off the list today.

We are on the road again and are aiming to get to Oodnadatta which is only 177km away. It is an adventure and certainly the roads are challenging and very corregated. We stopped on the way to look at the Delhousie station ruins where a young 15 year old Essington Lewis was sent by his father John Lewis to this location in order "to make a man of him." It was one of the most northern pastoral leases a very remote and isolated place. Interestingly the afgan camel traders left their mark behind too as there are date palms here. They cut many away and only keep the male plants inorder to keep them from breading. Date plams are an introduced species and take up too much water.

By 3:15pm we made it to Oodndatta where we refuelled and waited for the others to turn up. Tim raced Peter at the sandy straight and won, but that won't be general knowledge unless you have read this blog. Peter then took the remaining cars off for a sand dune drive this enabled him not to have to admit that Tim won! (And I thought I was competitive) this is where we had agreed to stop so that we could actually slow the pace down and sit back and set up during daylight having time to put everything up and see exactly what we were doing. But at Oodnadatta everyone knew we only had 195km till Coober Pedy so we were the only ones at 5pm who wanted to camp and this could be dangerous we said our goodbyes to the group. But over the 2 hours of waiting we had a loose sump on Rob's car, Kim had a shock absorber issue (lost nut and bottom shock rubbers and washers). Chris had fuel issues so in the end we drove with the group onwards to the next goal - Coober Pedy. This is actually good as we have Dave's drinks and water, Chris's fuel and Pete, Dave and Peter's jerry cans and even Pete's ladder. And Leah's maps (just remembered this onE as we parts ways sorry Leah and Peter) and will drop them back I promise. Best we come along then! 

We made it to Coober Pedy with the sun setting to our right and the low lying city lights glowing in the horizon. This area is so flat, then you are confronted with mountains of rubble of the mining. We thought we might  have two nights here but we have so much gear on the the ute that parking would be unsafe. And after much tooing and froing it makes sense to get home and start unpacking and cleaning up the ute (and getting washing, ironing, uni, assignments etc) ready for the surburban life we lead. It feels good to know we are homeward bound now and think we will begin the 17hour trip home!

I have leant a lot on this trip, everything has been new - especially the bathroom experience. Now at the end I can unload chairs off the ute, set up the table and help with the tent. This has been challenging physically (I have loads of new muscles), emotionally (learnt a bucket load about each other) and spiritually (been nice to sit and read and reflect on life) especially as we travelled at Easter time. I asked Tim what he has learnt about me on this trip and I evidently ask a lot of questions and complain a lot! I can only improve ready for the next trip, oh I mean character building adventure!

Coober Pedy to Burra then homeward bound

Wednesday 23rd April 2014 and we are homeward bound. We left Coober Pedy this morning after a quick wander around at 11am. Coober Pedy is the opal capital of the world and with a population off 3,500 people it is a surprisingly small town. We did some opal shopping and as we are keen to get home and we will come back and do this town properly and do the track to cediuna and swim with the sharks.

Glendambo was where we stopped for some lunch and just kept on going. We have been travelling with Dave, Robyn, Tristan and Andrew along with Gary and Deanna. We stopped along the way at Woomera where I was shocked to see that it is a ghost town these days with a population of 100-400 depending upon the airforce work there. I cant understand what happens with all the old infrastructure in this town with an old theatre (complete with 1950s original furniture, deco signage and all the original timber signage) and all the buildings. It walked around this place and felt so weird. All of a sudden I turned around Robyn was gone, I had this bad feeling that aliens had taken her away. It was a freaky place. Surely a simple government change will not close a town - I can not get over this and will do some more questioning about this place. I know Chris M grew up here with his family as his father worked in the defence force. The supermarket was open and the single employee was there in a shop that reminded me of the 1950s in design and shelf size. So much recent history is not being covered in our schools. I am interested in the Woomera Prohibited Area and can see why this place was chosen but even though it is remote I think about environmental damage that misle and weapons testing has done.

Way have done seven hours of driving and when we got to Port Augusta we all stopped for some KFC

We have kept coming along the Stuart Highway and made our way past Crystal Brook, Stirling and finally Burra where we met Kim and Travis for dinner at the La Pecora Nera - an authentic Italian wood oven pizza eatery (3 Thames St, Burra PH - 88922886) wheee they were out of pasta (as it is made fresh each day they hadn't expected over 80 covered so none for us) so we had their wonderful pizzas and shared breads, antipasto and about 5 different pizzas. Met a lovely family who have been helping in an indigenous community on Horne WA/NT boarder adm discussed my growing concerns with the ever widening fan between us and them. (Big discussion about the last round up in the 1980s)

We stayed at the motel in Burra as we could simply go straight to bed, sleep, be warm, get up early, shower (hot, nice and unending) and go again. Today, Thursday 24th April we have about 900km till home. We have gone through Morgan, Renmark (nothing to declare as we are coming into the state and not leaving) and have 142km till Muldura where we will need fuel and food. This treck home is hard, I am hot and bothered with the sun streaming in on my side of the car and we are obviously both tired and irritable and keen to get home and relax. But relaxing will not be on the cards as the will be so much cleaning and unpacking to do, washing, cleaning, sorting and a whole new world of camping gear to store and organise!

Mapping has never been a strong point of mine but navigating through Mildura I found that my skills and memory were accurate and this enabled me to get us onto the A79 Calder Highway successfully. We then made our way to St Arnaud and then turned onto the Calder Highway through Avoca, bypassed Ballarat on the Western Highway onwards to home. It has been a huge trip and a huge day of driving today and we are both looking forward to seeing Shelby and Matt who has been looking after the house. I will have to calculate how many litres of fuel we have used but it would be up near 1400L at a guess. The odometer is reading is 7380km but Tim is not 100% sure of that calculation as it has 79,800 on it and had not tarred it since being serviced. We have certainly done a lot of kilometres and are feeling it now that we are home!

Thanks everyone who was a part of this trip, thanks to those who have followed this blog and commented and thanks to all who have read about this trip. A wonderful adventure! Thanks again David, Robyn and Peter for the wonderful track research and support.

PS. The red headed spider we saw at the mining quarry off Binns Track was a red headed mouse spider - they dig a mouse like burrow and is very poisonious but not aggressive. We saw a male one and have photos on the Lumix camera.

PSS. We survived the trip with only three car washes, six loads of washing and heaps of sleep.

PSsS. Where to next? Wait and see!

Curtain Springs to Mount Dare (not Dalhousie Springs)...why you ask?

Last night we stayed only 83km from Ayres Rock but having left Yalara at 5:30pm we were not in the mood for much driving. We found Curtain Springs and it was a free camping ground, very rocky but a close place to set up camp (in huge dark) and get dinner on (sumac steaks at the springs) and relax after a huge day. The sunset was lovely and the rear of the rock was at the south east of us (a shape you wouldn't recognise) and Tim and I could sit back and enjoy.

This morning we woke to a lovely sunrise too - so golden and red compared with yesterday so in a way I wish we had another night at The Rock (we were mean to be there for 3 days in the original plan) as we would have seen something even more spectacular. Tim and I will come back to this place as there is so much more to see, do and experience culturally and environmentally - it is not about a climb or walk challenge for us.

Before breakfast we had a pet come right up to us! Dave tried to feed Fred! I then got some bread to feed him and as soon as I presented some he started coming at me with his neck raised and eyes focused on me. I can't believe how big the feet on an emu is!

We have a long drive infront of us today and it is nice to drive just under the speed limit and relax with the air conditioner on low and it is only 8:57am and we are already in shorts and t-shirts. So off we go as we have a long way till morning tea break at Kulgera Roadhouse. We have done 192km and find fuel here for $2.09 so 50.94L more has cost us $106.46 a bargain really! Kulgera has a beer garden and it is officially known as the first and last pub in the Northern Territory - wonder if Tim will have a beer? A great stop where the owner was so helpful and allowed us to refill the water tank on the roof with the boar water. This is perfect as our plans have changed...we are now heading from the springs back into the Simpson Desert. We wouldn't do something like that on our own so best to stay as a group!

We have bought some HEMA maps and today we can follow exactly where we are heading. From this we (just off the Sturt Highway) we then turned left towards Finke. On that track about 125km along we stopped to have lunch at Lambert's Centre of Australia. What a geographical achievement to have surveyed this landmark. Now back on our way only 201km till Dalhousie Springs. I can't wait as I have heard about Peninsular Springs, Hepburn Springs and can not wait until we take a dpi in the Dalhousie Springs - I am even wondering if they can do a pedicure or a facial!

But on the way, there is always a but, we encountered some boggy swamps. One of these was particularly bad just before Mount Dare. Tim decided that the bog was something he could go through, it was hard and a lot of harsh steering but he managed to get to the end. However, then Peter and Leah decided to go through but got bogged right at the end. The owner of the Mount Dare Hotel saw and heard what was happening and came to offer some support and advice. After tying to let the tyres down and reverse and get out on their own it was decided to winch them out. Dave set his car up and off we went! Upon arriving to the hotel we discovered that they were out of diesal so we were unable to keep going along to the Simspson Desert. Instead we found ourselves back on the road at after 5pm trying to get to Dalhousie Springs for the night.

But then, just when we only had 69km to go poor Robyn and Dave discovered that their dual cab Toyota had a severe structural failure where some bolts that hold the canopy and roof top tent had vibrated themselves loose. We all pulled over only a few km from Mount Dare. The boys fixed the car (Rob was excellent at trouble shooting) while the girls organised some wine and snacks (thanks Irma and Leah) to enjoy the sunset. And this has to have been one of the best sunsets we have had to date!

This meant we were back on the road by 7:30pm travelling in the dark on a dirty and very dusty 4WD track for possibly another 1-2hours depending on the bogs and dust! A few of us were unhappy about this, we voiced our opinion and Peter put it to a vote. I was told that as soon as one is unhappy we stop (but this caused a great deal friction) and we were setting up camp in the dark, beside the track, late at night and with not much time to cook dinner. 

Noodles for everyone tonight!

Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park

"The tourist come taking photo. What has he got? Another photo...he should get another lens - see straight inside. Wouldn't see a big rock then. He would see that Kuniya living right inside there as from the beginning. " Tony Tjamiwa

Tjukurpa is the basis of social, religious, legal and ethical systems of Anangu culture. It tells of creation time and how physical things came to being. What a great time I had at the cultural centre at the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park today.

The interactive visuals and displays communicated straight to my heart. I loved learning about the Yankunytjatjara and Pitjantjatjara people and seeing the display in both English and Anangu (arn-ang-oo)  just touched my heart and soul. Visiting this place has left an idelable mark on me and my life in many ways. I appreciated watching the indigenous ladies painting too and seeing a young indigenous boy tour one group though would have been wonderful for me.

Uluru (Ayres Rock) and Kata -Tjuta (olgas) are special places, not just because they are heritage listed and a natural beauty but because of the story that this land tells for the people all over the world. 

At 13 I first came to Uluru with my older cousin Ella and have striking memories that have been etched in my memory from then and are as fresh then as they are today.  And I was only 15 when the title deed land trust was handed back to the Anangu people by Sir Ninan Stephen but they received a leave for only 99 years. Is that limiting in your opinion? I understand that this is a process of joint management. But I keep thinking that this should be ongoing. Just thinking...

Watarrka National Park to Uluru - Kata Tjuta National Park

Another new day, another pack up, another refuel and another drive. We plan to travel 102km on the Luritja Road and then turn off past Wallara Ranch past Liddle Hills for another 61km and then we turn right into Lasseter Highway for another 137km till we reach Yulara.

It is nice driving on solid roads and seeing the vastly different environs in the morning as last night everything was a deep red colour and now it seems not as intense and even the greens are more muted than what I saw last night. With all the rain that had happened last week while we were doing the Hay river track the wild flowers are starting to pop up. We have seen so many buds awaiting the sun to help them along.

We had only travelled maybe 60km this morning when Lee and Tim had a land cruiser dual where both boys drove side by side. It was so funny to see Tim, Paul and Lee having so much fun. But as you know all good things end in tears...

Moments after this Lee's car began to loose power and he radioed that they had overheated the engine and to go on ahead. We did for 5-10min when both Tim and I decided that really someone should be there to make sure everything is okay. We pulled over and waited for 20min but still no Lee. So we turned around and saw them coming...Lee said that he thought he had burnt a hole in the piston...after an engine cool down things were still no better...so Tim saved the day and towed him to Ayres Rock 200kmd own the road.

In this time Gary and Deanna had also pulled over and we were able to radio what had happened to the car. Peter K, who decided to get the rest of the group (6 other cars) to Ayres Rock was a long way ahead. We hope to meet them when we get there - it will not be a three hour drive for us.

We arrived at Ayres Rock towing Lee's car. What a great feeling of achievement to have arrived safe and not quite sound. Upon arrival Dave discovered that the Rock was in fact open so the rush was on to get the next 18km under our belts and get there. Paul got a lift there leaving Lee back at Shell waiting for the RACV. We then discovered that this is Lee 's (20years old) 5th time to get here and not climb the rock! We then did a u turn and I jumped out and waited till Tim got back picked Lee up and in my opinion deserves hero of the day. We all decided to climb The rock. I can definitely say that it is challenging and I have no idea how I did this as a 13 year old! The slope is so steep and in parts slippery. But I sprinted up past chicken rock and kept going until the really steep part. Lee was egging us on and he did this trip in thongs! Dave was spurring Robyn on and together we all helped one another.

We made it and afterwards at the the base while waiting for others we heard a tour guide discussing some contentious issues about the rock. There are a variety of reasons not to climb Ayres Rock - we had seen the sign but we were so excited to be here and with all of us there (3 groups already started) the race was on. The reasons include cultural, environmental and health issues. Cultural reasons include the indigenous story. One ranger thinks it will be closed in the next two years. I am glad to say I have been able to do this twice. Environmental reasons are obvious reasons why this area needs to be protected. Health resons not to climb are important as there have been 37 deaths on Ayres Rock. The climb is closed more often than open. If it is too wet, dry, cold, hot, etc and if found in when closed the fine is $5000.  The Longitude 131° Guide was particularly helpful and his tour (five star style included) costs $2000 a night - obviously guid included.

We we have had a great day! What did you do today?