You can’t pass a rack of postcards in Australia without seeing the Outback, in full color saturation. You can be in Sydney and yet half of the postcards feature this distinctly Australian setting. Red Earth. Sand. The Rock! It called to me and here is what it said: “To hell with the temperature! You don’t have the math skills to convert C to F anyway! Just point the car north and keep driving.”
So we pointed the car north and drove for just a bit, to get a taste of the red centre. We stoppped at Wyperfeld National Park, which we had to ourselves, and walked along the arid mallee landscape. It was beautiful and peaceful… but not red.
So we continued driving to Mungo National Park. We drove into the mysterious landscape under the cover of darkness, the headlights only hinting at our surroundings. The next morning I did a little dance of joy on the bright red, clay-like earth. A-ha! The Outback! The park’s dry lake bed was home to hundreds of curious roos and an angry lizard who showed his displeasure at becoming the subject of our photos by showing us the size of his tounge. We saw emus and eagles. We drove across dunes that looked like craters of the moon and hiked a white dune that seemed to have been imported from the middle east. Still, in the back of my mind (and often the front as well) I wanted to keep driving north and expereince the true red centre…the isolation, the perfect Australian icon, the Rock!
I just had to see Uluru. I wondered what Rebecca and Molly would think…
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