Cain Manor

We woke up from our lovely tent at the “King’s Canyon Wilderness Lodge”, or at least I did. Justine slept in while I got up for a early morning hike. Earlier, when I mentioned where we were staying, I didn’t yet know about the coffee maker. It was magical, and at 5 AM, I fell in love with it. You press a button, and one fantastic cup of coffee comes out. It was the best coffee I’d had in Australia, and all it took was the push of one little button. My driver took me to the hike where we’d walk into King’s Canyon and then around it where I met up with a few other people. A Canadian couple that retired early (55). The man looked like Mark Filler. They were both in the Oil and Gas industry (I was corrected when I said Gas and Oil), and an older Canadian woman that we spent a good amount of time with – she was on most of our bus trip. She was probably in her 70′s, and kept up with me easily (mainly because I was taking many photos.) The hike wasn’t too hard, but I was somewhat sore afterwards. Interestingly enough the movie Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was filmed here. I’ve not seen it, as I’m not big on my Transvestite Cinema, but I intend to catch up when I return to the States.
Continue reading ‘Leaving Australia’ »

When I arrived in Sydney, one of the first things I wanted to do was get a working Phone. I thought I’d unlocked my iPhone, meaning it could be used on other carriers, but I had not (fuck you AT&T.) After much debate, I went ahead and bought a new, unlocked iPhone from the Apple store in Castle Hills Shopping mall, the 32GB version. It was just short of $1000 dollars, but in retrospect, it was worth every penny. This is a love letter to that phone.
Continue reading ‘Love Letter to my iPhone’ »

While we were staying at the Outback Pioneer, I was worried that we’d gone too cheap. The room wasn’t that nice and I was worried that the next night or two would be equally as dismal. It took some trying, but I eventually got the number of the touring company we were using (APT), and asked about the quality of the accommodations we were getting. Eventually I was able to talk a nice lady with the name of Justine about our accommodations tonight (it was, according to the brochure, deluxe tent camping), and she assured me it was the nicest of the places we could stay. I took her at her word, but still – tent camping?
Continue reading ‘Uluru to King’s Canyon Wilderness Resort’ »

We were picked up from our hotel at 6:20 (after being told it would be 6:30, so we held everyone up a bit.) We had a long drive ahead of us – 600KM, or 450 miles. It wasn’t too bad since they broke the trip up with somewhat frequent stops. Our first stop was at a camel farm, where I got to ride a camel. That was OK, but man are they some ugly creatures. I think he might have known I ate his cousin the night before. Then back on the bus for a few more photo ops, including one at a place called Mount Conner (also referred to as Fooluru, since it does look somewhat like Uluru.) We made one more stop at a place called Maruku Arts and Crafts Cooperative, where Justine got a bit of Aboriginal art. She was pretty adamant about getting something where the artist was really Aboriginal (some aren’t), and got most of the proceeds. It was on cloth, so it’s rolled and packed safely in our luggage. At 12:30 we eventually got to the town near Uluru called the Ayers Rock Resort. There was a name for where we were, but I don’t remember. Without the resort, there isn’t much of a town. This resort had a range of hotels, ranging from what seemed to be pretty high end to campsites. We stayed at the Outback Pioneer, which was a relatively low end option. It was one of our only options to choose from, but it wasn’t that nice.
Continue reading ‘Alice Springs to Uluru’ »

We left Perth midmorning, arriving in Alice Springs after a three hour flight.    The flight seemed shorter than it should have been, but that may have just been because I was working on my blog while we were in the air.   We landed about 5 PM (oddly enough, 1½ hours ahead of Perth) Alice Springs time and found it to be somewhat chilly.  I can’t think of much that has surprised me more on this trip than finding Alice Springs, in the middle of Australia, chilly at 5 PM in the afternoon.   Our pickup from the airport wasn’t there waiting for us, which I did not expect.  It seems that once we left Melbourne, there have been more errors in the services provided (no washcloths or hand towels in our hotel room, for example), than we have seen before.  I’m going to attribute it to a more lackadaisical attitudes as you get more remote. After about 20 minutes, a very chatty fellow shows up to take us to our hotel.  He spent almost the entire time talking about either his family or himself – not very engaging, but he got us where we were supposed to go.
Continue reading ‘Perth to Alice Springs’ »