Welcome to my first travel blog since 2019. A pandemic kind of got in the way, and besides a few minor trips around this beautiful, diverse land of ours, we have been, like everyone else, mostly at home.

I’ve decided to move my blog to WordPress, although all of the previous blogs are still available on www.offexploring.com/scottpop, for those who ever want to put themselves through the torture of revising our past travels.

So, it is with great excitement that I relay our most recent adventure to the heart of our country, the spectacular red, red centre.

We flew out of Melbourne to Uluru airport and arrived at around 1:00. Our transfer met us at the airport and drove us to our home for the next three days, the magnificent Longitude 131. We were shown straight to our room, which looked directly onto the imposing Uluru, or Ayers Rock, itself. What a view. We could have stayed in the room for three days and enjoyed that view, but we had an urgent date with the restaurant where we began our continuous three day food and drink binge in earnest. All food and drink is included at Longitude and we intended to take full advantage. Of course, we had to start with the obligatory bubbly and lunch was brilliant.

In order to expend some of the calories we had already ingested, we headed off after lunch straight to the magnificent rock. It really is breathtaking and it amazes me how enormous it is. We did a short walk along the base where our guide pointed out some caves with ancient Aboriginal art in them and natural geological attributes of the rock that tie in with Aboriginal stories. Unfortunately, there is no wildlife around the rock other than birds, because we polluted the top of the rock so badly when we were allowed to climb it, that the water sources are still polluted to this day. People urinating and crapping on the rock, discarded nappies and batteries still wash down the sides of the rock now and so the water has high concentrations of e-coli and lithium. As such, there is nothing except camels for 100 kilometres around the rock.

The colour of the rock was a resplendent orange that seemed to glow from within and our walk culminated at a gorge, where Longitude had organised canapes and more bubbly. Unfortunately, the bubbly made me a little gassy and I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to hold down a belch while smiling, but I’m here to tell you that it is impossible. Our guide, Lynette, went to take our photo, just as the gas from our champagne decided to resurface and she kept us held in a frozen grin for so long that I couldn’t swallow to keep it down and a burp came, entirely unbidden, from the depths of my stomach and out of my smiling pie hole. Embarrassing, to say the least. I’m sure Lynette won’t be dilly-dallying in future when she snaps pictures of her guests.

A short drive back to the lodge and we walked up to the lookout to enjoy the panoramic views of Uluru and Kata Tjuta (The Olgas). Then it was off to dinner. Our waiter, Alex, was from Toulouse, France. Such a lovely guy and great to see foreigners finally coming back to Australia to help our hospitality and tourism industries. Alex looked after us very well and we enjoyed another beautiful meal. The menus so far have had lots of seafood dishes, which is ironic since we are probably further away from every ocean than any other part of Australia. Nevertheless, it has all been super fresh and the chefs here are amazing.

The next morning we had to rise at 5:30 in order to eat breakfast before heading off for a tour of Kata Tjuta with four other guests. Our guide today, Wayne, has moved here from Ocean Grove, where he has lived for the last 16 years. He got us to Kata Tjuta nice and early, before all of the tour buses, so we had the place to ourselves. We walked into Wolpa Gorge, which in the indigenous language means “windy”. It was easy to see why. It was beautiful. Peaceful, picturesque but very windy and absolutely freezing. We had rugged up, so we were all good. The only drawback was that Lidia waited until we had completed our walk all the way to the end of the gorge, before kindly informing me that my beanie was on inside out.

I rectified my beanie, hoping that none of the other guests had noticed,  and before Wayne offered to take our photo. I accepted, despite yesterday’s unfortunate burping incident. I figured I hadn’t yet drunk bubbly today, so what could go wrong? Up to this point of my life I had never considered the dangers of the words “thank you”. The syllables are arranged in such a way that in a very cold environment where unforeseen spittle can form on your lips, it will inevitably be ejected from your mouth onto the front of whoever is unfortunate enough to be standing in front of you, in this case, Wayne. Not only did I inadvertently spit on him, but the photo he took was a monumental failure. For future reference, it may look nice to use the panoramic setting on your iPhone to take a vertical photograph, but it has the tendency to make your subject look like a cabbage patch doll.

After returning to our Van, we were off to the Kata Djuta viewing area to take some awesome shots, then the Aboriginal Cultural Centre, which was very interesting, then back to the lodge to eat and drink more.

That evening, we were driven to the sunset viewing area to take some magnificent sunset pics of the rock. Longitude took us to a spot away from the thousands of people pouring off the many tour buses to a secluded area where they fed and watered us with more champagne and canapes. A truly beautiful way to watch the colours of the rock change and glow with the descending sun.

We then took the van to the field of light, a relatively new installation where 50,000 hand blown glass bulbs powered entirely by solar, glow over 58 acres (7 football fields) in many different colours. Again, Longitude organised this so that our small group were the only ones there, the multitude of tour buses arriving as we left. Very well organised.

That evening we were taken to Longitude’s special outdoor dining area where they gave us ponchos and hot water bottles as we dined around the fire, under the stars of the desert sky. After a brief tussle with the woollen poncho where I became hopelessly tangled inside it with no escape due to the inordinately small head hole, we sat back to enjoy the desert night sky. Unfortunately, in our case, we dined under the desert clouds because there wasn’t a visible star in the sky that night. It didn’t stop our guide from pointing out the constellations hidden behind the clouds. We just had to imagine they were there.

When we arrived back at our room after dinner, the staff had setup a swag on the daybed on the patio of our room with hot water bottles, popcorn and nightcaps, including cognac and baileys. We braved the cold air for a while and after saying farewell to the clouds, went to bed.

The next morning we were up with the sparrows again to take the 12 kilometre walk around the entire base of Uluru. The weather was perfect: Not too cold and not too hot, and at this time of the year there are very few flies, which made for a very pleasant walk. We even managed to do the entire walk without being run over by one of the many segues tearing around the walking tracks.

After sunset drinks at the lookout that evening, we enjoyed another wonderful meal with a lovely couple we met from the Yarra Valley.

Just before dinner, a local came in and played the didgeridoo for us. He had us completely mesmerised. The sounds he was able to generate from that piece of wood were truly incredible and we absolutely loved it. I was blown away by how he was able to play constantly for 10 minutes without taking a breath. I was chatting to him afterwards and he uses circular breathing to keep playing without stopping. In through the nose and out through the mouth in a constant stream. Amazing. His didgeridoo was made by a man in Byron Bay whose is universally known as the best maker of didgeridoos anywhere. Apparently after he dies, they’ll be the Stradivari of the didgeridoo fraternity. Anyway, it was impressive.

The next morning we woke to find that Jetstar had cancelled the only flight to Melbourne. As I write this, we sit on a plane to Brisbane where we have to catch another flight to Melbourne. Thanks Jetstar! Way to top off a perfect holiday!