Heading into the Outback

"No wireless networks were found in range" said our trusty netbook as we booted it up in the caravan park cabin we finally found in Pt. Augusta which provided us with a reasonably priced room with cooking facilities for the night. Well, it's no wonder, we are on the fringes of the Outback of Australia so it's probably something that we will just have to get used to over the next week as we travel through the red centre.

After a lovely service at Trinity Church in Adelaide we picked up our car which would be our constant companion for the next 7 days. It is a dinky little Ford Focus with no 4-WD (to Johan's dismay) but air conditioning which (thankfully) works very well. We had considered getting a GPS system however the nice lady at the car rental place assured us that there was only one road which would take us to Uluru and that it was fairly impossible to get lost. So we saved a few dollars there and went for a comprehensive insurance instead, packed our rucksacks into the back and headed north.

Our first day of driving took us from Adelaide to Pt Augusta and between the two is lots of wide open spaces. There was one occasion where we saw a lake on our right hand side which looked a bright pink colour - then we took off our sunglasses and realised that it was just a very light pink shade. The drive on Sunday took around 4 hours and ended in a tiny port town with a big history. As we found out this morning when we visited the Waldata Outback centre, over Australia's history, many men have headed out from Pt. Augusta on exploration expeditions in search of lakes, arable land, anything other than what they eventually had to admit covered most of the centre of the last continent - desert.

And more desert is what we found during monday's drive. For six long hours we saw only desert and flies. About a billion of them, so as soon as we stopped and opened a window or a door, the car was full of them. Where do they come from and Why are they here?? There is only about one car every 10 minutes passing by, so tourists cant be their main source of food...

The scenary is amazing though, expecially as we came closer to Coober Pedy and the small trees gave way to smaller shrubbery that allowed us to see further into the vast expance that is the red centre and also allowed us to see just how red the centre actually is. Though we expect it to become even redder tomorrow. And along the way there were a few dry salt lakes which were woth a stop, a quick aaaawwww in the scorching heat and a few quick snaps then back into the car and try to try to clear it of flies.

Tomorrow, we'll be heading into the very heart of Australia, hopefully we'll pick up a signal there.