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Well that's us back from the outback on our Red Centre Trip!! And we survived!!

The heat was UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!! and that's coming from someone who loves the heat and sun.......but it really was torture!!

Apart from that it was FANTASTIC!!!!! We were picked up from our hostel in Alice Springs where we met the rest of our group. Altogether there were about 9 of us.

The first day we drove to Kings Canyon for a bit of treking. The initial part of the hill was tough...no wonder they call it "Heart Attack hill" The views were amazing though. As you can see from the photos, the land is arid.

On our way to our campsite we had to stop along the roadside and pick up some fire-wood.....saw some really strange stuff, nests, insects etc!!!

To make things slightly more interesting the boys in the group (including Iain) helped make dinner....spag bol!! which actually was really nice....... while the girls made the campfire........which was also really good....Surprisingly!!!

We had the option to either sleep in our tents or outside in a "swag".... which is like a sleeping bag but more padded like a matress. It was a bit difficult to sleep (due to the heat) but it was good though........the views of the sky at night were amazing. I wish I could have taken a photo to show you all what it was like!! (but photographs never seem to do that kind of thing justice.)

The next morning we had to get up at 4am as we had to leave the campsite for 5am and head straight to Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Kata Tjuta. This was another day of walking etc........but we also managed to get to a place and watch the sunset here aswell, which was great!!

Wasn't feeling too good on this day (got the start of a cold.....and later in the evening I think I had heat stroke despite drinking loads and wearing a high factor suncream. I went straight to bed when we came back to our campsite.

We are happy though - got to see sunrise and sunset at Uluru!!!! No matter how good the camera is, the photos really dont do it justice at all!!! (one of the other guys had a Canon SLR, and even then it didn't seem to capture the magnitude!!)

The last 3 days have def been tough so we were glad to be back in a nice little hotel to get a proper shower etc!

We are now in Cairns. I am totally loaded with the cold! can you believe it!!!! and I am updating the blog while Iain is off to pick up our campervan that we will be living in for the next 3 weeks!!

Hope you are all well, keep those messages coming - love reading them to find out what you are all up to!!

Take care!

Louise & Iain xxxx