this year.

Daly Waters is a town based around a pub. Scratch that. Daly Waters is a pub and a caravan park. That’s it. The Daly Waters Pub is essentially the only thing for 100km in any direction. It is also considered the oldest pub in the Northern Territory, and for this reason gets a lot of tourists and visitors.

People call in for a beer and end up spending the night, reveling in music, drink and talk. It’s the first pub in a long time that I’ve seen that does not run the TV all day. It gets turned on for the morning news and the evening news and rugby games. that’s it. Besides, the TV just gets in the way of the conversations you find yourself in by just turning around. You meet the most interesting people at small town pubs, and Daly Waters may be the epitome of this.

I met a bloke that goes by the name of Dingo. he is 62 years old and retired. He lives his life sleeping in his swag and doing what he likes. He calls into the Daly Waters Pub twice a year (at least), and I was around for one of his visits. Despite being retired (and doing well for money) he just finished an 8 month stint looking after a cattle station during the wet season. During the wet season no one can get in or out of most places without the use of a helicopter, so they pay people to live there and look after the place. A bit like the hotel in The Shinning I suppose.

Dingo told me he likes to be alone most of the time, and can’t stand camping near people, but on the flip side he is one of the most social people I have met. As he calls into the pub often he knows the owners and is thoughtful enough to bring things for their children. He has an interesting outlook on life and had some amazing stories to tell. Life is to short to be stuck up in Sydney he says, there is to much to do. He wants to be living in the bush until he can’t any longer, and when that happens he wants to employ backpackers to drive him around and take care of him so he can keep traveling. I’m not sure if I’m that hardcore, but it’s an impressive dream

Dingo is only one of the fascinating cast of characters that live at or call into the Daly Waters Pub. The only way to truly appreciate the place is to call in your self — they’ll leave the light on for ya.

It’s one big rock. I took a 3 day 2 night tour of Kings Canyon, Kata Tjuta and Uluru with Mulga Adventures out of Annie’s Place in Alice Springs.A quick side note, Annie’s in Alice is heaps nicer than the Annie’s in Adelaide. It has a bar/restaurant with $5 meals and $10 jugs. Very social, very clean.

On day one we departed Alice Springs around 6:30am heading for Kings Canyon. Kings Canyon yields some very impressive rock formations that have been produced by tectonic plate movement and weathering. This is how most every rock formation is created, and depending on the circumstances of events we get different results. There is an 8km rim walk around the Canyon that we did, and the views were amazing. In summer the temperature gets up over 40C and makes the walk nearly impossible after 11am. This being winter our daily highs were 19-20C. When we completed the rim walk we headed towards our camp for the night, which turned out to be an open piece of land out back a cattle station. This is why Mulga Adventures tour costs less than most other tours — you rough it. The food is excellent and plentiful, the buses are top rate, the tour guide knowledgeable and nice. What you sacrifice are amenities in the evening. We made a final stop at flush toilets then trek off into the bush to roll out our swags and light a fire. In the morning we drove back to the toilets to get cleaned up — sans showers of course. For the time you are out it is more than doable. In the evening for us it got down close to 0C. Whoever got up in the night to pee had to stoke the fire. Good times.

On day two we ventured into Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park to view and hike Kata Tjuta (aka The Olgas). This is actually a more sacred rock formation for the Aboriginal people than Uluru. Driving along the road you can see Uluru to one side and Kata Tjuta to the other. Kata Tjuta means ‘many heads’ and is an apt title for this formation that looks like many domes and soars 546m at its highest point. The views on this hike were also spectacular, and looking at the weathering on the rocks was interesting. It is amazing how nature can produce such beautiful things.

After the hike we made our way to the sunset viewing area for Uluru. I had seen Uluru on the drive in and tried not to look, but it’s power is mammoth. It is a big rock that dominates an area of virtual flatness. It rises 348m out of nothing. We reached the viewing area in good time to secure a fence line post to view the sunset. It was interesting to watch other more expensive tours arrive in large coach buses, with table linen, fruit and cheese platters, champagne, beer and proper glassware! How high and mighty they must have felt standing next to us, with our dirt, our goon, our camping mugs and our camp stove cooked meal. Frankly, I’d have it no other way. We were having a ball. As the sun set on Uluru — with a clear blue sky behind it — the rock lit up to an amazing glow of red that slowly crept across its face until it was shrouded in darkness. A great show. The only thing that could have made it more breathtaking would have been if a few clouds had graced the sky and provided shades of pink to highlight the view.

Sunrise on the rock was less impressive then sunset but still lovely to see. After the sunrise we went for a walk around the base. Some members of the tour wanted to climb the rock, but due to high winds (25 knots) the climb was closed. The Aboriginal people prefer if you do not climb the rock as it is a sacred spot in there beliefs. The path used to climb was used in men ceremonies.

With Uluru done we headed the 5h back to Alice Springs for the night before heading off again for Darwin. I didn’t see much of Alice Springs (in fact I saw the main drag from various buses, and the inside of Annie’s Place) but feel like I’ve been there via Clelland’s photos. It is a 3 day tour to Darwin, but I will be making a stop in Daly Waters to visit Clelland who has made the pub there his home for a period of 10 weeks.

(view the complete set of photos at my flickr.)

On the train up to Sydney I bet a friend that the first person I would met on my trip would be Canadian, as Canadians have a reputation to be plentiful in Australia. No sooner had I grabbed a beer and sat at the bar in Sydney Airport, I was approached by a gentleman in his 50s who saw my Canadian Flag badge on my backpack. He lived in Canada close to Pearson International Airport and moved to Brisbane recently because his Australian wife was tired of the weather. Good on him I say.

The flight to Adelaide was uneventful aside from the minor delay while we waited to locate Medical Cargo, as we were the last flight out for the night. Unfortunately they couldn’t locate it so we left and made it into Adelaide ahead of schedule. As it was almost 11 the shuttles from the airport were no longer running so I got stuck taking a $15 taxi to Annie’s Place (hostel). Annie’s Place is a decent hostel with clean room and nice toilets. My only negative is it’s lack of common space to relax and meet people. They only have a small outside quad that is cool at night. Other than that it’s a nice place for the price to make a brief stop.

Adelaide was far from spectacular. I took a walk around town and saw everything within a few hours. Being a sunny Friday I thought people might be about, but for most of the day I was wandering the banks of the river, parks and city streets in seclusion. There just isn’t much to do in Adelaide when it’s not summer. They have a free museum and art gallery that I spent some time in, as well as a main pedestrian mall where I stumbled upon a Starbucks. Starbucks and me have a love hate relationship. I’m not a huge fan of the coffee, but in Australia it’s the best value for my money in the brewed coffee department. I suppose the highlight of my day was getting kicked out (read: asked politely to leave) the museum because I had circumvented security on the way in and smuggled in my coffee and backpack. However, A large nightclub sized security person viewed me from across the room and informed me of the rule. I think it’s ridiculous that one can’t enjoy a coffee while walking around a museum. Alas, such is life.

It was nice to have visited Adelaide but will be much nicer to get on the road and view the centre of Australia: Uluru, Daly Waters, and Darwin.