Wed 29 Aug - Uluru

Flight from Perth to Yulara at 10:30. You get a great view of Uluru from the plane on the way in. It's a further hour and a half ahead of home here in the Northern Territory. Hotel I'm at is pretty basic, I picked the cheapest private room I could get, which has 2 bunk beds in it & set me back a little over 200 dollars a night. Wouldn't be bad if you were travelling with a group, but when you're on your own its a bit on the pricey side. However, I'm only here for 3 nights, so its not the end of the world. I'd booked myself in for the "Sounds of Silence" dinner which involves some drinks, a fantastic sunset (probably the best I've ever seen), and dinner out in the outback which all goes on for about 4 hrs. Absolutely fantastic!

There was an interesting mix of people at our table, two women from Yorkshire, one of them now lives on the Gold Coast, two Japanese guys both from Tokyo, but one of them now living in Sydney, myself and an Irish couple. Turned out that the woman was American and used to be on Glenroe! I though I recognised her from somewhere when she sat down.

Dinner was a selection of different meats, some of them from the bush. Before dessert there was a presentation from an astronomer pointing out the stars visible (which are completely differet to what we see in the night sky at home). I don't think I've ever seen the stars so bright. Firstly there were no clouds in the sky, the sunset lit up the whole horizon in a cascade of different orange colours, and when the moon came out along with the stars they were all much brighter than I've ever seen them before. Or maybe that was the result of a few glasses of champagne and some red wine with dinner! :)