at last after months of planning, my 7 awesome friends and i managed to have this roadtrip this winter break. here, i wanna share with you my detailed experience during our superb vacation together. :)
day 1
so, this morning, we gathered at Pia's house to pack some food we bought a day before in Adelaide. some of us (aida, najwa and sze luan, also the host, arep) shopped the important stuff together as we arrived early. I took care of food for the trip, and so we bought the food supply for 7 days as we planned to have a very hardcore outdoor meal, cooked by ourselves. hoho. we travelled by 2 vans, one with 5 seats named premium and another one with 3 seats named doof doof! at 12 pm, we started our journey, and our target was to reach Coober Pedy by midnight and slept there, but doof doof! ran out of fuel in the middle of our journey and it was just 10 minutes past 10 pm when the Bp station at Glendambo closed by the time we arrived to top up the fuel. oh ya, before we arrived glendambo, we top up our fuel car at this one small town called red hill. and believe me, you wont believe your eyes if you have the chance to see the scenery there, it was fantastically beautiful, definitely have a true view of country image with windmills, green hills, wheat plantation and heaps of sheeps and cows. glendambo is the only town in the map equipped with fuel station before coober pedy with distance roughly 237 km, because doof doof couldnt be refilled, we decided to stay at glendambo tonight and continyue our journey tomorrow morning. the temperature outside at that time was around 9 degree celcius and luckily there was toilet and coffee shop at glendambo. eventhough the tap water tasted weird and "payau", but we had no choice, as long as we can wash our face and brush our teeth, that should be fine with us. :)
day 2
we woke up early today because we were far behind the schedule in this trip. but everything was ok at the moment. we had peanut butter and raspberry jam for breakfast, and also 3-in-1 nescafe. the fuel station opened at 7 am, so we refilled the fuel at that time and continued our trip. everything was going well so far until we had to stop at one rest area because najwa had a terrible diarrhea out of sudden. this might due to unheathy meal we had yesterday before we departed from adelaide. poor her. we had to syop frequently because there was no proper toilet in the outback, and the fuel station was very far away from one another. this "shit" thing became the joke of the day then. :P and we arrived coober pedy to top up the fuel again, and prepared sandwiches and washing tupperwares from yesterday's meal. we also bought 4 big bottles of mineral water and buying the emergency fuel can too. we only spent about 1 hour in coober pedy because we wanted to reach Marla by the end of the day. unfortunately, our little doof doof could not survive at the border of the South Australia and Northern Territory, the temperature of the car rose out of sudden and so the radiator leaked. we stopped at the roadside to check the car, and decided to solve this problem at the nearest fuel station which was 30 km away named Kulgera. it was 7.30 pm and sze luan called the Wicked company and the road assistance to help us with this. however, they only come to help the next morning, so we had to stay there tonight and re-planned the journey again. we rented the caravan sites there, and cooked our very first outdoor camping style meal, sardines, fried rice and fried eggs. there were hundreds of mices at the moments as they were facing mice plague at that time. :S and we only had our first shower there as there were showers and proper toilets at the caravan park. so, that night, after planning what to do, we played cards and having some fun in the van. long day, huh? :)
day 3
we woke up a little bit late today as we still had to wait for any assistance at 8.30 am. however, sze luan said the mechanic was from alice spring which is 3 hours of driving from kulgera. plus, the road assistance didnt even know our location was, so sze luan and i approached this one kind man to help us with this towing thing. he offered us his towing rope and hook so that we could tow doof doof to alice apring and changed to a new one. luckily that guy lived 10 minutes of driving away from alice spring. so we decided to return his stuff there by tonight. thank you :) and there you go, doof doof was being towed to alice spring from kulgera. we moved from kulgera at around 1 pm and reached alice spring at 5.30 pm. bye bye doof doof!. and now we got a new van named batman. :) before we leave alice spring, we shopped some food at Coles there, and didnt have the chance to wander around alice spring because most of the shops and attractions closed at 5 pm. and we decided to drove back down the highway to erldunda, a pinch point between the road to ayers rock, alice spring and down to south australia. we arrived erldunda at 11 pm and had to sleep early because we wanted to reach ayers rock early in the morning.
day 4
we woke up at 5.30 am and straightly drove to uluru. it took about 4 hours from erldunda to ayers rock. we had the chance to witness the beauty of sunrise along our journey. it was beyond expectation and the scenery was more than awesome. :) we stopped at curtin spring campsite to refill the fuel for a while.it was raining on our arrival to uluru. najwa and fizi collected the pamplets about uluru and kings canyon at this one information centre. the plan for today was to look for the accomodation site first and finding shower and toilet! lol and we found this superb 5 star hotel and lodge for free. wuhoo. we cooked pasta for lunch and went to uluru for an evening walk. the view of uluru during raining was totally different than under the sunlight. we had about 2 hours of walking at uluru and the funny part is we had to wear ponchos during our walking because of the rain. lol. i'll show you some pictures after this. ;) and then, we went back to that lodge to take a shower and cooked maggi for supper. that night we rented a caravan park because we could not sleep at the lodge. but it was still ok as the facilities at the lodge was very good. :)
day 5
this morning, we planned to have a 3 hours of walking at katja juta. although the weather was cloudy and raining, we managed to complete the walk that day. it was seriously beautiful and wonderful to have the chance walking around that sacred place of aboriginal here in ayers rock. we found this small booth providing a drinking water (kapi), and refilled our water supply, replacing the weird tasted water with this fresh mineral water. we didnt have the chance to view the sunset as there was no sunlight for the day. so, after that, we drove back to the lodge, and cooked pasta and mihun. tonight, we had to drive to kings canyon because we wanted to spend a day there. at 10 pm we were leaving ayers rock and heading to kings canyon. it took about 3 hours of driving and we stopped for a while at kings creek, 56 kilometres away from kings canyon resort. we reached the resort at 1.30 am and rested there for the night.
day 6
so today, we would hike at the canyon. it took about 4 hours to walk in the canyon. and we couldnt believe we did this. :D we started our hiking at 10 am and finished the whole walking at 2 pm. we stopped at the sunset point to have a tea time together before heading to erldunda that night. it took about 5 hours of driving before we reached erldunda to sleep that night. we didnt want to drive late at night as there was many wildlife such as kangaroo and rabbit crossing the road too. we arrived erldunda at 2 am and straightly slept there before continuing our journey down the road. :(
day 7
from erldunda, we drove to coober pedy to spend the day there. the first place we were looking for was the shower! from erldunda, it took about 3 hours of driving, and we reached coober pedy at 9 am. we stopped at this 4 star caravan park named stuart range and had our first shower after 2 days there. it was a great pleasure and we manged to cook our final meal there, we had maggi goreng and sandwiches. sze luan bought us a seafood pizza there. thank you sze :) and after refreshing ourselves, we went to opal old mine museum in coober pedy. we had the chance to watch the demo about how opal was digged and i bought this one pair of opal earring there. :) then, we had to continue our journey back to adelaide that day. luckily, wicked gave us one day extra for the rental vans. so we needed to reached adelaide by 4 pm tomorrow. for tonight, we had to spend the night at port augusta. it took about 7 hours of driving from coober pedy. but we managed to reach pt augusta that night. :)
day 8
well, it was the last day of our trip. everyone had no mood at all. we woke up that morning and stopped at red hill again for breakfast and continu eour journey back to adelaide. arep and fizi brought us to st kilda adult playground. we were so pumped and the playground really brought back out childhood memories. haha. we spent about 2 hours there and then went to arep's place to clean up the vans. :( we reached home at 2 pm and took a nap before meeting again for post mortem that night. so long outback, till we meet again. :)
