Brisbane was hot and steaming when we returned to Duet at the end of February, not that this worried us having left an extremely chilly UK behind us. We packed up the car and set off for stage one of our intended inland cruise around Australia. First on our list was to head for the vineyards of the south. We had developed a passion for Shiraz — the rich black gold of the wine country.
We began at the Hunter valley just to the North West of Sydney and worked our way down south via Canberra, not noted for its wine, but more for the glorious museums and art galleries, to The Barossa valley and Mclaren vale.
From Adelaide we treated ourselves to a luxury train journey on the famous Ghan which now runs all the way from the top end down to Adelaide. The joy of letting the train take the strain whilst you eat a delicious dinner, drink perhaps even more red wine and sleep in comfort to be woken at dawn with a cuppa as the sun rises over the desert. The Desert means Alice Springs and of course, Uluru. The photo does not really do the colours justice.
We walked around the rock, 9.5km unlike some tourists who take no notice of the local peoples’ wishes and insist on climbing it. We spent a couple of nights there so that we did sunset as well as sunrise before moving on to the Macdonnall ranges where we met local people and some of the things they still eat!
We are now on our way back to Brisbane.