On this day back in 1985 I was travelling through the Northern Territory.

Australia is huge. The journey from Ayers Rock Lodge to Alice Springs took five hours. We had a new air conditioned bus from the Lodge to the Stuart Highway junction, but then got onto another old bus that had travelled up from Adelaide. It was a really hot day. A sticky soggy mass of people got off the bus in Alice.

Alice was nothing like I expected. There are hills around and it is a large town. Apparently, back in 1985, it was the fastest growing town in Australia. There were no buses or public transport in the town so it was difficult to get around. The only option was an explorer bus for the tourists. There were no road markings in the centre of town, no indications as to who should give way, which caused great confusion. Aborigines sat around town, sat in the dry river bed. I didn’t want to walk around town after dark.

I visited the Royal Flying Doctor Base and learned about the service, it’s history and saw exhibits of equipment used and general communications for the Outback.

The old Telegraph Station was an old stone buildings in the middle of bush. The station was located by the original “Alice Spring” which is a permanent waterhole in the usually dry Todd River. Here you got a feel of the remoteness of the early settlers. Further along the river I visited a camel farm and a date farm.

The next day I took a half day tour out to the McDonald Ranges. There was some beautiful scenery out in these hills. We stopped at Simpson’s Gap and Standley Chasm two narrow gaps in the hills, where dry river beds run through. Rock wallabies live amongst the fallen rocks. Standley Chasm is just five meters wide with tall red cliffs on either side. It was a pleasant ten minute bush walk up to the chasm from the road.

I got back on an overnight bus heading north, air-conditioned this time. Our first stop was at Ti Tree roadhouse at ten pm. The driver warned us about kangaroos, dingoes and eagles as we walked through the garden to the toilets. I thought he was joking, but no! A kangaroo came up to say hello and there were three dingo pups in a fenced area. An eagle sat on a table across the garden. We had another refreshment stop at three am.

I saw another lovely sunrise. When we stopped for breakfast we noticed the heat and humidity outside the bus. There were more trees up here and noise of budgies and parrots flying around in large flocks. There were also hundreds of huge termite mounds.

On this day back in 1985 I was at Ayer’s Rock – Uluru.

I stayed at the Ayers Rock Lodge and fully appreciated a bed and shower after a few days on the bus. Towards the back of the site, there were paths up the sand dunes which gave my first view of Ayers Rock, or Uluru as it is now called.

It looked unreal. One single gigantic red rock on a flat landscape. The Olga’s were visible in the distance, a group of individual round rocks. We’d passed Mount Connor on the drive in, a table top mountain, the third unique giant rock formation in the area.

I took a day tour to Uluru, which drove the 9 km around the base, stopped at cave paintings, at a wave cave, at Maggie Springs, a permanent waterhole. Our guide told us about the Aborigine legends. The Federal Government gave Uluru back to the Aborigines on this exact day in 1985, with a hand over ceremony in the shadow of the rock. The old Ayers Rock motel and campgrounds where Azaria Chamberlain was killed had been removed and a new tourist centre at Yulara, twenty kilometres from the rock was the new tourist resort.

The rock changes colour depending on the weather. The red colour is due to oxidisation, the rock is rusting. We saw the original grey colour on the inside of some of the caves. It’s surface is quite flaky and pieces do fall off. In places the rock sounds hollow, where it is lifting underneath.

The next day a few of us from the hostel drove back to Uluru and climbed it. I really don’t remember this. I wrote that I climbed but I didn’t know how. I hated it. It was very steep in places with a chain to help you up. Each time I stopped I debated whether to continue up or go back down. I did get to the top and saw the view. I’ve obviously blocked out that memory.

On the drive back we noticed that a few cars had stopped and people were taking photos, we stopped to and I got to see a four foot long goanna resting by the side of the road.

I joined an evening tour of the Olga’s which included a barbecue dinner. This guide showed us the flora, the desert oaks, the spinifex, before we hiked for an hour among the rocks. That was a nice climb with rewarding views at the top. We saw a beautiful sunset and enjoyed good food, including the traditional bush meal of damper and billy tea. As we drove back to the hostel and resort, there was spectacular lightening in the distance and rain heading our way.

On this day back in 1985 I was on a bus, travelling through South Australia to the Northern Territory.

(This was the beginning of several weeks travelling around Australia, so my posts looking back to 1985 will be more frequent in the coming weeks.)

I had travelled on an overnight greyhound bus from Canberra to Melbourne, then another bus to Adelaide. The countryside in Victoria was flat, mostly farmland. We stopped a few times on the journey, but mainly in one street towns. The clocks changed by half and hour between Victoria and South Australia.

The country side changed to pine forests in South Australia, Forestry Commission land with various saw mills.

Murray Bridge was an interesting place. The bridge was a hundred years old and much longer than seemed necessary to span the Murray River. But it was built to accommodate the flood waters that occur at certain times of the year.

Trees were mainly Australian natives, eucalyptus trees, evergreen and bottle brush. Back in Canberra the trees were European and in blossom, emphasizing that it was spring time.

We climbed the Adelaide Hills on the approach to the city. I arrived at dusk with the lights of the city laid out below us. Adelaide is a nice city. A main square, Victoria Square, and four other smaller squares are within the square mile city centre district. It was the first city in the world to have a “green belt”.

The River Torrens runs through the city alongside the northern terrace. I explored the art galleries, museums, arts centre, shops and caught the tram to the nearest beach at Glenelg. It was an overcast day but people were fishing on the pier and the esplanade was backed with Norfolk pines.

I spent a day on a tour of the Barossa Valley wineries, rolling hills, old style buildings with a German influence, vineyards and pretty towns. We sampled some good wines and lunch was included. The return drive to the city took us through the Torrens gorge, a narrow windy road alongside the river beneath the steep cliffs.

The bus broke down on the next leg of my journey so it was dawn as we arrived in Coober Pedy. I’m glad I got to see it in daylight. What a place. A real hole in the ground.

It’s the greatest opal producer in the world, a town literally in the middle of nowhere, the surrounding area just pale white earth. A one horse town, with an “out in the sticks” atmosphere, a population of just a few hundred.

The opals are just dug out of the ground, so there are holes and mines shafts surrounded by piles of earth dug out. An incredible sight. Some of the people who mine the opals here have dug their homes out of the ground too, cooler in the hot daytime temperatures. It was such a weird place. I was glad to move on after our breakfast stop.

As we drove north on the Stuart Highway, the tarmac run out. We had eight hours of dirt road. Because of the state of the road, the bus company only used old buses on that route. So we had a clapped out bus, hence the earlier breakdown, no air-conditioning, no cushions. The bus rattled and shook for the whole journey. A real bone shaker.

There had been rain in recent days which had left huge puddles, so the driver negotiated these by driving off the road and going bush. Our view for all those hours was mostly nothing. The occasional cattle, and fences miles and miles apart. This was a region of large cattle stations.

The land was flat but did change from sparse grass and low bushes to an area of trees and bigger bushes. The soil changed colour from the pale of Coober Pedy to the deep red soil and sand as we approached the Northern Territory.

We stopped at a couple of places to drop of freight. Mount Willoughby seemed to be just a small store with a petrol pump, in the middle of nowhere. Then Marla was a bit bigger with a pub and a cafe.

Indulkana was a different experience. A small place with several streets of houses, a school and a community centre. There was very little grass, the streets and gardens were red dust and mud. The majority of people that we saw were Aborigines, barefoot, sitting outside where the bus stopped. There was a diagrammatic sign indicating no photos.