Meidän koti

Notkuimme Mellussa suunnitellun parin viikon sijaan kokonaisen kuukauden. Siivosimme ja käytimme tulevan asuntomme ja kulkupelimme, rakkaan Pakumme huollossa. Ihmettelimme, kun ilmastointi haisi pahalle. Arvoitus ratkesi, kun Rohan löysi autosta koripallonkokoisen hiirenpesän. Ja siinäkö sitä pitäisi bunkata seuraavat 5 kuukautta?!?! Hiiristä päästiin eroon, ja täten, saanko esitellä, meidän koti, 'The Van' eli näin suomalaisittain 'Paku':

Halusin maalata siihen kukkia ja sateenkaaria uskottavuuden lisäämiseksi, mutta mies ei antanut lupaa. Toisaalta, tätä kukaan ei arvaa reppureissaajien campervaniksi. Täällä Ausseissa kun on sellaisia hassuja lakeja, että omassa autossaan nukkumisesta saa herkästi sakot. 

Tv-huone

Makuuhuone

Keittiö

Kylpyhuone

Takapihana koko Australia! Nyt kun välttämättömistä esittelyistä on päästy, voidaan pikkuhiljaa mennä asiaan ja aloittaa eeppinen 25 000 kilometrin Australian ympärimatka! Lisäjännitystähän hommaan tuo se, että tällä kertaa, Learner's Permit hanskassa, myös tämän tytön on tarkoitus hypätä rattiin. NO PANIC, siellä Suomessa tuskin on tarvetta pysyä poissa teiltä!

Coming up: Tien päällä day 1!

Six Feet Under

It was time to head south towards South Australia and Adelaide. The scenery was flat and arid with little vegetation or settlement. 360 degrees of nothingness except for the long straight endless road.

Nice sunset at a rest area where we stayed one night. 

On the way we saw a few big salt lakes. 

Yeah, I shouldn't have let him drive!

One night we stayed at a small, eccentric town of Coober Pedy, 850 km north of Adelaide. The town is known as the Opal Capital of the World. Many movies have been filmed in the arid, apocalyptic landscape. At first glance the tiny township doesn't seem very fascinating. All you see is dust.

On the surface, the town doesn't seem very interesting.

This is because 85 % of the population lives underground to escape the extreme heat of the summer. They have underground churches, shops and hotels. The aboriginal name Coober Pedy means a white man's hole in the ground. Well, of course we had to try it out and we booked a hotel room for the night. The hotel was nicely built, way more than six feet under, dim, dank, but warm, which suited me, as the nights in the van started to get colder and colder the more south we went. This time we didn't have time to spare for mine visits or other attractions. We had dinner at a nice Greek restaurant and retired early to our cave.

Many Heads

Contrary to popular belief, Uluru it is not the only huge red rock in the area. 25 km west of Uluru there is another huge rock formation. Kata Tjuta (The Olgas), meaning many heads, is not as famous for some odd reason as its little sister, although it is much bigger, and maybe even more impressive than Uluru.

Kata Tjuta consists of more than 30 rounded, red, massive rock domes. There are many Dreamtime legends associated with this site also. It is a very sacred place for the aboriginals and they still carry out ceremonies here. 

We did a 3,5-hour-walk between the domes to the Valley of the Winds, and found out exactly why it is called the Valley of the Winds. The views were amazing and it was one of the best walks we had done so far. 

Kata Tjuta really doesn't look like it is from this Earth, it is like you are on a different planet.

For the night we drove back to the rest area with the view of Mt Conner. IT STARTED RAINING. Lucky us, rain in the desert! The shelter was leaking, we had to cook in the rain, and I was FREEZING!

Didgeridoo

Before we started heading towards the big red rock, we had to stock up in Alice and while we were there, we wanted to try the didgeridoo. There was an amazing didgeridoo player giving free lessons at a didgeridoo shop. I have to tell you guys, it is much harder than it looks like... But great fun! For me the most difficult part was trying not to laugh when I played it. 

The view of Alice Springs from the lookout on Anzac Hill. 

Flag of the Northern Territory

A disturbing sign in a public toilet:

At first glance, these headlines in a local newspaper were even more disturbing:

After reading a bit more, you notice that this time kids in fact refer to baby goats. Still, freaked me out.

The West MacDonnell Ranges part I

The MacDonnell Ranges are a series of mountain ranges that stretch out for hundreds of kilometres on both sides of Alice Springs. As time was limited, this time we were only going to do the West MacDonnell Ranges. 

The traditional owners of Alice Springs area believe that the ranges were originally giant caterpillars that entered this world through one of the huge gaps in the area. And from far away the mountains do indeed resemble a giant caterpillar. 

The weather had changed since we got to the centre of Australia. In the daytime it was nice and around +25 degrees, but at night the temperature dropped and it got really cold. 

The first night we stayed at a place called Ormiston Gorge. We did a couple of walks around the Gorge. One of them ended at a deep waterhole that we had to swim through, wearing our shoes, and the water was icy cold!

It is easy to imagine why the mountains and the area have such a significant meaning for the aboriginal people. Gorgeous landscapes, beautiful nature and a vast silence around you. Just us and the mountains...

Wild watermelon!

The Red Centre

After 10 days of driving from Cairns we finally reached the Red Centre of Australia. Alice Springs, with only 27,000 people is the unofficial capital of Central Australia and is situated in the geographic centre of Australia. 

Alice Springs is a nice little town, a mix of old-style buildings and modern shopping centres. It is also the aboriginal art capital of Australia, and the streets are full of art shops one after another. For the flocks of tourists there are also tour operators and travel agencies in every corner. 

Approaching Alice we ran into these signs. Alice Springs is a dry zone, and that means you will get a heavy fine for drinking in public or carrying too much alcohol with you. You see, the indigenous Australians in the area (25% of the population in Alice Springs) like the booze a bit too much. So the town is trying to reduce alcohol-related problems with these new laws. For instance, bottle shops don't open until 2 pm and you can only buy cask wine after 6 pm, and only 2 litres per person. But when we visited the local Bottle-O, to us it seemed like the liquor was still flowing among the aboriginals despite the laws. 

But we only did a quick stop in Alice this time and moved on to the West MacDonnell Ranges for a couple of nights. 

Towards the Centre of Australia

Before arriving in Alice Springs we stopped at a couple of interesting little townships. Wycliffe Well is supposed to be the Roswell of Australia, a UFO village. It is said that UFO sightings are so common there that you are considered unlucky if you stay there and don't see anything. Well, we only did a quick stop and didn't see any aliens. It was basically just a petrol station and not much to see. 

We camped about a 100 km north from Alice Springs that night.

In another small village of Aileron we stopped for photos of these big aboriginal statues.

There was a big friendly kangaroo who gave me kisses.

Soooo CUTE!

Devil's Marbles

We stopped for Internet, supermarket and laundry in one of Northern Territory's biggest towns, Tennant Creek, with the population of 3,000. I guess there are not many big towns in the Northern Territory. Most of the population is aboriginals.

An hour's drive from Tennant Creek are the Devils Marbles. It is a pile of huge, several metres high, red, round granite boulders that have formed about 1700 million years ago. The site is known as Karlu Karlu for the traditional aboriginal owners. 

It is a very sacred site for the aboriginals. Aboriginal people believe that people from the Dreaming (stories that tell of the journey of Ancestral Beings that created the world) hide in the caves under the rocks. 

"They are real people like us. You can see them. A long time ago I went with my billycan down to the creek here to get some water. One of these secret people came out and started playing with me. I couldn't go away. My mother came and got me, saved me. After that we never camped at this place again, never. They are kind these secret people, but they can make you mad. They can change you into one of them. They can say 'follow me' and you can't go back. It happened like that for my cousin. He disappeared. The old people made a big ceremony, singing the ground and the rocks to make them let my cousin come back. We have lost that song now. We have no song to bring children back." A senior traditional owner

We were lucky, and secret people didn't make us mad. .... Or did they? 

Welcome to the Northern Territory

A long boring drive.

We stayed a rest area at "The Pebbles", which is a sacred place for the aboriginals. It used to be aboriginal women's dancing place. Basically, it was a pile of rocks. We made a campfire under the stars.

The Pebbles.