Noddy's adventures

So this is a BIG post. It encapsulates a few places, has lots of photos and three videos. The reason? My phone is not working – dead as a dodo for the time being. Hopefully it’ll be fixed soon so I can get some videos back.

Noddy and his entourage have moved on to the red centre of Australia, and holy moly is it red. They toured King’s Canyon & Watarrka National Park first, then Kata Tjuṯa (The Olgas), then Uluru. The desert here is surprisingly green, lots of grasses have sprung up and the weather has largely been mild, which makes walking around very pleasant! It’s not really as we were expecting, but there was a bit of rain that fell as a result of a cyclone that hit Western Australia a couple of weeks ago which has watered the desert. So here we go!

Kings Canyon & Watarrka National Park

King’s canyon has a rim walk, which we did half of and then back. Yes, we should have done the whole thing but it was spectacular nevertheless. We followed up with a walk through the canyon gorge, a great contrast to the rocky outcrop above. There was also a helicopter flight over the whole thing, I took some awesome video but as previously mentioned my phone decided to die horribly that night and I have to wait until the next town that has a phone fixer before I have any hope of getting my contacts and all that footage back. Just as well Gina and Jo took photos because I have “borrowed” them. Back to the subject – King’s Canyon and surrounds. On the walk we learnt that if you put your ear on white gum tree trunks you will hear running water if there is any in the land below. Lo and behold it was true!

We also visited an Aboriginal cultural centre, and a serene place called Kathleen Springs. Video is here

–> https://youtu.be/yA30kEGVbKA

Kata Tjura

On Gina’s Birthday, we made her get up at 6am and see sunrise over Kata Tjura and Uluru. We then made her walk through the Kata Tjura gorge, where she hurt her ankle. Not a great thing to happen on someone’s birthday but hey, shit happens!

As she went back to the car to snooze and answer her birthday well-wishers, the rest of the entourage walked to several lookouts within the rock formation. This place was just amazing, we were overawed at the enormity and the silence walking through.

Here is a link to the YouTube video –> https://youtu.be/PqoZ_yKqH5k

Uluru

This Uluru post is confusing as we saw Uluru from absolutely everywhere. So we will start from the sunrise view, which we actually saw before the sunset view (the sunrise view was part of Kata Tjuṯa sunrise, see – it’s confusing).

We should actually start with Fooluru – this is Mount Connor. It has fooled countless people as they approach Uluru.

For the eagle-eyed amongst you, we have taken our bikes along from home. So we actually took them off the bike rack for the first time on this trip and rode them around Uluru. Also as I was using Gina’s phone to take photos and video I was forbidden to take any photos or video whilst actually riding the bike – I may have disobeyed that directive….

The following day we went out to the Field of Light dinner for Gina’s birthday, what a great experience!

Uluru video –> https://youtu.be/0u3JwRN739U

Kings Canyon video –> https://youtu.be/yA30kEGVbKA

Kata Tjuṯa (the Olgas) video –> https://youtu.be/PqoZ_yKqH5k