Around midday we walked around Uluru! It’s big! In some places you can’t take photos because it is sacred land to the aboriginals and it is disrespectful. The name of the traditional owners of Uluru is Anangu. When it’s not windy like it was today you can climb Uluru but the Anangu don’t like it because it’s not what they used too do. At one place around the rock there was a cave sort of thing. It was the kitchen that the woman would crush up the nuts and things in. You could see smooth places where they must of done it most of the time. It was about 10 kilometers around.
Uluru is a Monolithic rock which means its one large rock with no joins. It’s made of arkose which is a course grained sandstone with lots of the mineral called feldspar. For dinner we had a meal outside under the stars near Uluru. We learnt about the stars and they had telescopes that we could see the moon and Saturn through!

Today is our first day at Yulara (the town where Uluru is.) We drove from Mt Conner this morning. All our days so far have been about 20 and sunny, the nights have been cool but we have still been able to rug up and have our dinners outside!

Today we went on a bus tour around Coober Pedy. We saw several under ground churches. We also saw the golf course. The golf course is all dust but the putting green is black, sand and sump oil. The golfers carry around a piece of turf to hit their next shot off. Cooper Pedy golf club is one of the only golf clubs to have reciprocal rights with Saint Andrews golf club in Scotland! As well we went to the opal mines and an under ground house. At the opal mines they have machines called noodling machines. Noodling is where they look through what some one else has already mined and find opals that they may have missed. You can make around 1 to 2 thousand dollars a week from noodling. The underground house was actually just like a normal house inside, except that the walls are sort of rough. Underground houses would be good to live in, I think, because they are fire safe and they are dark so they are good for sleeping. We also saw the dog fence. It was built to keep the dingos out of sheep grazing country down south. It goes for over 5000 kms and over QLD, SA and WA
Tara
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On the way from Wilpena pound to Marree we drove for an hour through the Brachena gorge, it was 15km long and took almost an hour to get through. There were lots of different coloured rocks. We saw lots of different rock formations that have built up over 600 million years. They have been pushed up out of the ground. We hit our first water crossing. The water was up to the top of the tyres nearly.

When we got up there was a kangaroo eating from our slops bucket under the van. In the morning we went for a 3 hour hike called the wangarra hike. The hike took us to the top lookout of Wilpena pound. On the hike we stopped at a cottage. It was a really old cottage and it had signs out the front that had some of the history of it. Someone called Jesse Hills moved there when she was 12 to cook and clean for her 5 older brothers, they also had ladders for the chooks to climb up so the foxes didn’t get them. The hike was really fun. For dinner that night we cooked chicken in the camp oven, it was delicious!

Today we went to Wilpena pound. Our first stop was at Peterborough we had lunch there. We made rolls earlier so we had them. We went to a few shops then kept going. The next stop was at Ororoo to see the big gum tree,it was very big. When we got to Wilpena pound we set up and cooked kelly pasta on the camp fire.We had a good day.
Tess

Today we went to the Almondco factory. You could see the machines working away packaging the almonds. We drove past the Berri factory but it was closed. We went to one winery it is the longest family owned winery. There was a giant orange that you can go into but it was closed. Dad and I swam out to a trampoline on the lake. It was a bit flat so it sunk down into the water so it was like a little pool. The water was so cold it was like swimming in just melted ice. Some times it was so cold that it got a bit hard to breath. We sate out side to eat our tea because it was not to cold.
Tess