Judy & Brian Tour Oz

Yesterday we went out to do the obligatory Mala Walk at Uluru, but the crowd! Yuk. Couldn't get interested really, so we went around to the Cultural Centre and had a browse through there instead. One thing we did was watch the 20 minute video. Neither of us could believe that they were still playing this over and over. The newest footage in it must have been from the 1970s, and well frankly, all of us have moved on. I would really like to see them make a video of their world today so that we have a proper perspective of how the relationship has advanced or otherwise. Didn't really do much else, we both elected to have the rest of the day off. Today we headed out to Kata Tjuta, which we reckon is equally as awesome, using the word in it's true meaning if you like, than Uluru. We did the Walpa Gorge walk, as we did last time. This is a magic walk, up and up through the narrowing gorge, the rock faces rising perpendicular on either side, the orange colour of the rock ...

Slid down the road to Yulara in 6 1/2 hours, including fuel and a feed at Erldunda. The heap is starting to give good kilometridge now that I know to manually select 6th gear. Now it's giving me 14L / 100km, bit better on the hip pocket nerve that 20+ ! Anyhow, we made it into the Ayres Rock resort campground and settled into our designated spot. First thing we notice is that compared to 2 years back, the place is deserted, well almost. Wandered over to the shopping village and bought a few bits 'n pieces at the grocery shop before hitting the new cafe. Read several day-old or so papers and ate interesting Anzac bikkies while scoffing quite acceptable coffee. It was almost deja vu as almost on cue the indigenous dance group appeared and started to put on their show for the collected rubber-neckers (that's us). Quite entertaining it was as they shared a number of traditional dances with us. They did the usual kangaroos and emus and the like, but one fellow did a fabulous...

Hell's bells - now there are only 10 weeks to go, time to get serious about some of these things i guess! What we have done: Changed the dog'n bones to Telstra to get the better coverage 'out there', not to mention a rate pre-paid 15% of whet we were getting from our provider of 19 years. Too bad for them, eh? Put a complete new set of top-of-the-line Michelins on the X5 - ouch that hurts Had the X5 fully serviced including the chassis and the towbar Booked Coober Pedy Finished the CD's - then culled the 3300 tracks down to 1200 Bought a used ipod from ebay and loaded the music to it - 1200 songs, some of which are later than 1969 Don't really know what else to do in the way of preparation for the car and van - we've used it extensively for 2 years and feel comfortable with their performance and reliability - maybe we'll just take off and see how it all hangs together. Sometimes we are keen and excited to be going, other times we are just ...