The Centre

We spent the night at Kathleen Springs which despite it's no camping sign had quite a merry troop of campers checked in. We made a bright and early start and headed to King's Canyon in the morning. We overtook quite a few of the early walking grey nomads on their way up the canyon including a particularly vocal lady with a T-shirt sporting the slogan "Ageing - everyone's doing it".

Lachlan is demonstrating exactly what the signs said not to do and was forced to explain to an eight year old that it indeed was not a good idea and he really was being rather silly.

The rock formations on the top of the Canyon look like enormous bee hives and surprisingly there were no climbing prohibited signs here.

The views from the rim of the canyon overlooking a 300m drop really are spectacular. The sheer size of it is difficult to convey on camera, but here is one of Lachlan's panoramas - his new favourite photo technique.

Next stop was the famous monolith that is Uluru. It seems like an obvious statement but this rock really is big! The base walk is 10.5km and makes you really realise the enormity of the site. We grappled with the concept of climbing the rock (in Lachlan's case momentarily) and then decided to have a go. We were foiled by high winds closing the rock on our first two attempts so started with heading to Kata Tjuta and then the base walk.

Whoever named The Valley of the Winds walk at Kata Tjuta was really being quite literal. The goretex jackets made their first appearance as we wandered through the giant rocks.

The base walk was very beautiful and we did repetitively marvel at the contrast of the blue skies, red rock and green bush. The flies however did become tiresome and it wasn't long until Lachlan caved to the concept of the fly net (after earlier being heard to mock others with these accessories). The wildflowers were abundant with Peta's personal favourite being this number which closely resemble mini microphones.

Photography and touching the rock is prohibited for much of the walk but there were a few amazing spots we could get close and have a look.

Along with everyone else that visits Uluru, we lined up to view the sunset and try and get the ultimate postcard snap. In our case this involved climbing on the little Rav's roof racks. On our second night we were treated by Port and John with a gift of a sunset dinner so the sunset viewing style went a little more upmarket.

On our final morning the rock was open to climbing so up we went. It is a very steep incline that has the calves burning on the way up and quads trembling on the way down. Not to mention Peta's heart racing with a slight case of vertigo... Not surprisingly, the view from the top is amazing and it is clear why this place is considered sacred.

We then headed back to Alice where we were treated to another night of Doigy's lovely hospitality.