Initially I was like “ooh don’t wanna touch that!”, “don’t wanna get wet” and “oh the sun is burning my skin”. But after the 3rd day or so, I was like.. “oh who cares” and I decided in order for me to enjoy the experience I needed to really get into it like everyone else did.. …well sort of…  It wasn’t easy to transform overnight from a little princess to a warthog if you know what I mean? But hey… I did my best  

There was 14 of us in a group – 2 from WA; myself and Iain from the UWA Branch. We flew into Ayers Rock and overland to Darwin. Ayers Rock is quite stunning, especially looking down at it from the aeroplane. It was literally this humungous rock sitting in the middle of no where. We arrived at 2pm and were picked up by our tour guide from Adventure Tours Australia. His nickname was Buzz (apparently he used to be a bee keeper.. get it? Bzzz) Anyway, we stopped by the camp site and did the Uluru tour straight away. We visited other sites such as The Olgas (another huge plane of rocks nearby) and the Valley of the Winds.

Our 10 day tour was such a fast pace with a jam packed schedule. We saw so much and the experience of living in the outback was really something to remember… like getting stared by frogs and cane toads while you’re having a shower or making sure you don’t sit on a redback spider in the toilet… no matter how much you shoo those ugly cane toads they just won’t go away..! Maybe they’re just a bunch of perverts. Ha ha! I got to sleep in swags under the stars.. How’s that?! There were literally 1000’s of stars across the entire sky and not a cloud in sight. Every few minutes when you close your eyes and open them again you get mesmerized by the glittering skyline and the occasional shooting star would streak across the sky… It was so beautiful…  We visited Kings Canyon, Devils Marbles, Mataranka thermal hot springs, Daly waters pub (1st pub in Australia), Alice Springs, Kathrine Gorge, Litchfield NP, Kakadu NP, to name a few and the trip ended in Darwin. We visited a lot of red rocks on the bottom part of Northern Territory and as we made our way up there were less rocks and lots of waterholes instead.
 
As an animal lover, my favourite spot was the reptile centre in Alice Springs. I got to handle snakes, blue tongue lizard, sleepy lizard and green tree frogs. However, the highlight of the whole trip was when we went to the Juumpin’ Croc Cruise, and we saved a wallaby! The poor little thing was hanging on for her dear life to a piece of log and was only a mouthful away from the big bad crocs around! She almost drowned but luckily we saw her and quickly took her away from the water. It happened when Cyclone Monica was around and flooded the region… as a result we named her Monica. All and all, I had a fantastic time.. It was different to any of the trips I’ve done, and for those of you who haven’t slept in swags before.. you’re missing out!! So start rolling those babies out in your backyard and believe me you’ll have the best sleep! …ZzzZZzZZzZZZzzzzZZZzzzzz….