After some days in Sydney I took a train to Melbourne for about $60 (student concession). On second thought I would take a Greyhound travel pass now they are much cheaper if you already now where you are going. There are travel passes for nearly every route you can think of. But because I was not too sure what to do I took the train which is IMHO much more comfortable for longer journeys.

But because of the weather I decided to go on. Now Greyhound was the way to go. I bought a Central Explorer Pass ex Melbourne for about $180 ( youth hostel member concession ) which allows stops in Adelaide, Coober Pedy, Erldunda, Ayers Rock, Kings Canyon and Alice Springs. You just have to phone the folks at Greyhound Pioneer one day before you want to travel and they will put you on the right bus. Do not forget to check your baggage in this is like travelling by a plane ;)

My next stop was Ayers Rock. A place every good tourist should have seen.

One piece of advice book your lodgings early here. They only have one backpacker! You have to pay $20 dollars for a 20 bed room. If you are lucky you might even get a 4 bed room. I myself called them one day before I left Coober Pedy and they were booked out for reasons I will understand later. The only accommodation left was a $240 per day hotel room!

For $90 bucks I got on the Greyhound Ayers Rock, Olgas and Kings Canyon tour. Arriving early at the morning in the Ayers Rock Resort my first destination was the backpacker. They told me the same info I got on the telephone: We are booked out. But wait, they have cancellations at 6.00pm in the evening, what bad luck that I would be on the sunset tour to Ayers Rock. But everything turned out well and I got a room eventually.

The Greyhound tour takes you first on a trip around Ayers Rock. You get some info about the Aboriginal culture and the basic background about the place. You have some time to walk around and admire the huge rock and the unique color. It is really as red as it is shown in the travel brouchures. In the evening you go to the official sunset photo spot. There has to be an official spot because the Aboriginals do not want some places, which are specific to men or women, to be on photos of tourists because the wrong gender might see them. This place was crowdedi. You nearly couldn't see the rock for all the tourists here. Germans and Japanese everywhere they swarmed the whole place. But then, why complain, I was a tourist here myself. Bigger bus companies whose name I do not want to mention here offered also a kingly serving of champagne of which half or more was thrown away later. But then you know at least where your money goes.

On the next day we climbed Ayers Rock itself. It was freezing cold but you got a nice view of the Olgas from up there. I would not recommend this for people with bad health. Some of the passages are a bit steep. After the climb our Greyhound coach transferred us to the Olgas where we had a short walk.

Our 'accomodation' was really neat. We slept on inflatable mats beneath a moskito net and thus got a view of the nightly stars. All the noises of the bush can get really soothing once get used to them. The only shock we had was one day after coming back from a long trip. We smelled and saw smoke coming directly from our camp side. After some minutes we even saw fire, real bush fire, around our whole camping site. We all got a bit nervous but when we saw the rangers in control everybody calmed down again. The fire was just to protect the camping site against burning. Reason: Where nothing is to burn nothing will burn.

Our last day was a cruise on the Yellow Water River where we saw real salties!! One was as big as 3 meters and had the ease to eat a bird directly in front of our eyes. We also saw beautiful water birds which you won't see at any other place in Kakadu.