Archive for July, 2009

On The Road – Alice Springs

written on July 25th, 2009 with no comments

My daughter has a friend over from Canada – staying with us for 2 months. We decided last year that when she came to Australia we’d basically trek around with her. So I signed up for some wireless broadband access and we started our adventure at Alice Springs. Given that it was going to take 2-3 days each way to drive there and back we decided to fly which takes around 3 hours.

I’m spending most of my time in the hotels we’re staying at – it’s pretty much a ‘working holiday’ while the girls go and see the sites. I did take one day off though to walk around Uluru (formally known as Ayers Rock). I’d only ever seen it on the television and in magazines so it was a real buzz to view the real thing. It’s every bit as spectacular as I expected it would be. The tour we went on was ‘Uluru/Kata Tjuta and Back In a Day‘ with Emu Run Tours and it was a great day all around. The guides were knowledgable, funny and helpful throughout the day which ended with a barbeque and champagne at the Uluru sunset viewing area. If you are planning on visiting Alice Springs and the surrounding area I can definitely recommend Emu Run Tours.

We stayed at a motel for 4 nights – the Swagmans Rest Motel. It was neat and clean and very comfortable. It’s also close enough to the CBD that you can walk there in around 15 minutes. We ate out one night at The Juicy Rump – which is a restaurant at Lasseters Casino. The steak was excellent and it’s a very popular eatery with a lot of atmosphere.

Wild Storm in Victoria

written on July 4th, 2009 with no comments

Last Monday we drove up to the Grampians (also known by its aboriginal name – Gariwerd), which is a mountain range here in Victoria. It’s well known for its spectacular rock formations and views. On the first day the weather was quite clear. We went on a walk to ‘The Pinnacle’. It’s a 2-3 hour walk that takes you through forest, a small canyon and then up to one of the highest points in the Grampians. Being a smoker and a programmer who spends most of his day at the keyboard, I have to say that I was totally knackered by the time we got to the top. :)

It was worth the pain though.

On the second day we drove around a couple of other well known site seeing places and then decided to drive up to another lookout before we headed home. On arrival at the lookout there was very light rain falling but not enough to really bother us. There was also some lightning and thunder which sounded fairly close, but not right over the top of where we were. We all agreed that we needed a toilet stop and as there was a toilet block conveniently positioned nearby we headed over there. Just after going inside the toilet the skys opened up and poured a deluge of heavy rain. It was really loud … and then the hail started. It was almost deafening on the tin roof of the toilet block.

Fortunately the heaviest part of the downpour didn’t last long, so we decided to head back to the car and say goodbye to the Grampians and Halls Gap.

As we began the first leg of the journey back which is about 45kms from Halls Gap to Ararat we noticed quite a lot of bark, small to medium sized branches and other debris from trees scattered along the road. This very quickly progressed to whole trees and very large branches that were, in some cases, blocking one lane of the road. I’d estimate that we saw around 25-30 trees that had blown over completely. We had to stop and wait a few times for the road to be cleared and passed 5 or 6 crews that were working with chain saws to clear the fallen trees. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve seen trees blown over of course but never so many along such a short stretch of  road.

When we got back to Ballarat I checked the news and apparently these strong winds had cut across a fairly wide area with one woman being killed by a falling tree and power cut to many rural areas. Halls Gap, where we had been staying, didn;t have its power restored until around 3PM the following day.

Next week we’re off to Uluru (Ayers Rock) for a few days and I don’t expect that we’ll see much rain :) .