Sleeping in the swag was a perculiar experience. I remember feeling a cold at one point, then warm at another. The fact was though that I set the alarm for 4:45am and when I saw that everyone was sleeping I made the mistake of lying there looking at the stars for a while, and the next thing I knew Sally was kicking me awake, I'd missed breakfast and the bus was about to go.

I leapt up and mobilised myself at hyperspeed, so in the end I wasn't the last one on the bus after all, another couple had overslept too (though they 'hadn't been sleeping' hinted Sally later).

We set off at 6am (still pitch black) and raced the dawn, making sure we were at the base on King's Canyon (which is only 32km from Kings Creek) when it arrived. The King's Canyon walk is only 6km long but was cited at taking three hours and there was all sorts of warnings on signposts everywhere about rememering to talk enough water, and to cover up and the dangers of sunstroke and dehydration. We were there at dawn though when it was lovely and cool and a refreshing breeze washed off the rocks. There was a sharp 150m climb but then everything was a lovely easy amble over baked red mustone, looking at all the geological features and down into this valley (all nicely set off by the rising sun).

Apparent the aborigines used to call this place the garden of eden, and the reason for this is the valley has been created from a collapse of the rock, and has resulted in some of the base of it being under the water table, thus hidden way in this terrible scorched desert is a cool blue pool, fed by underlying ground water and trapped rain, and protected from evaporation by the steep cliffs of the valley. The Aborigines used to save this place, and only hunt it during times of hardship because it was one of the few places that had food all year round and could be used as a reliable backup.

Other interesting Aboriginal facts: the rocks round here has been weathered into huge rounded lumps and the tribes have made up various stories about giant cats or turtles lying down to sleep and being turned to stone etc. though sometimes its a bit hard to spot the shapes and Sally reckons alot of it could be attributed to a local bush whose leaves, if eaten, make you hallucinate for a week. The tribes also used to have their own law enforcement in the form of men with feathers on their feet (to spread their tacks so they couldn't be tracked) who would sneak up on wrong doers and squeeze the sap of another type of bush in their eyes and blind them. This doesn't go on anymore but apparent if you look closely at tribe members you may see scars on the backs of their knees or in their elbows or perhaps even missing bits of fingers or toes - this is how the tribes keep order now. Wonder if they've considered administering papercuts to the bits of flesh between the fingers? That would keep me in line for sure anyway.

We did a circuit of the rim of the valley and then a look at the cool still pool in the middle that really was a welcome florish of life. Then we plodded back to the van, had an orange to spruce us up (it was still only 10am though the sun had started to get mean now) and began the long long slog to Uluru.

Uluru is a dry community, on request of the tribal women. This means the only waku (means liquor...or perhaps wakuma) you can get for miles is a road house 80km away and its vastly over priced. Still got some though because Sally reckoned it would be a "three tinnie sunset". First we went to the campsite (discreetly placed some distance from the very expensive Yulura resort) & set up our swags for the night. Then we drove to the Uluru cultural centre, all the while with the Aussie whinging about how they couldn't see why they had had to change the name of the rock and what a lot of hassle it had caused reprinting everything. The rock loomed, as well it had a right to what with being a 1.6km high red thing sticking out of completety flat surroundings. It loomed like a thing that knew it was being worshipped and jolly well enjoyed it. It loomed over us for our entire drive around it and even afterwards we still got a sense that it was looking over our shoulders constantly.

We had a look around (lots of stuff about the Anangu law & all the icky stuff they ate) then (because it was now just before sunset) quickly buzzed over to the Uluru Sunset Viewing Area (tm). It quickly became apparent that this is what everyone does, and the carpark was full of large coaches out of which were spilling fat aged pink people wearing sunvisors & safari shorts, all ready to drink champagne and eat club sandwiches while standing in the way of everyone else.

We were having none of this. As the token scummy poor people, we got out in our soiled hiking gear, tinnies in hand, and marched up some nearby sanddunes to look at the view there instead. There were still trillions of people but they were more 'our sort' and the wasn't a glass of champagne in sight. Having said that, as the crowd slowly dispersed once the initial sunset had occured, I found myself left alone except with an old guy from Huddersfield who was taking 5 min interval time lapse piccies just like me. He didn't give a damn about champagne and was just hanging out for the black-sky-orange-rock thing (which didn't happen). I wimped and left when I thought I saw my tour bus disappearing off but he looked set for the duration, bless him. I guess he didn't care about a bed for the night either.

Back at the camp we had a barbie and beers to celebrate another sucessful sunset, then went to sleep once more in red dust filled oil skin bags and slept under the stars...