Finally a trip that had nothing to do with work!!!

Alright, after over a year of radio silence, I finally managed to once again pick up this blog.

So, after over a month since my 3-week trip around Australia, I started looking at the pictures I took and sorting out the crap from the slightly-less-crap. Several things became painfully obvious when I looked at the pictures on my PC:

1. I may have bought a really nice DSLR, (Canon EOS 550D), but, unfortunately, now the camera is lightyears better than the skill of its operator.
2. As nice as the screen on the camera is, it is utterly useless to determine whether a shot is in focus or not, or whether it is slightly over/underexposed.
3. You can never, ever, EVER take too many pictures of any given motif (especially with a Digital Camera). Case in point: I took about 15 pictures of the Sydney Harbor Bridge at night, and all but the last one of them were either out of focus, or jittery, or both. Now, this is not to say that the last picture was perfect, but rather that it is the least crappy out of the lot: 

(now before you think "Oh shut up, there's nothing wrong with that picture", click on it and see the difference...)

Anyway, I have made a number of pictures, and while they are not the greatest pictures ever made, they should give at least something of an impression of the places I have been to.

First (and probably most famous), there is Uluru:

during the day...

...and at sunset (from a different angle - the "narrow" side)

If you look very closely at the second picture (and have a lot of imgination ;-) ), you can just make out the footpath that leads up Uluru.

From Uluru we went to King's Canyon, which - as the name implies - is a Canyon roughly 50 km north of Uluru (330 by road). The road to King's Canyon (and later from there to Alice Springs) gave a very good impression of the loneliness of the outback:

The above picture is basically what we saw most of the time. I have never ever in my life seen roads that are as staright and as deserted as these. Going from Uluru to King's canyon and then on to Alice Springs, we drove about 700 kilometres, and saw a grand total of 11(!) cars. Now, keep in mind that the road between Alice Springs and Uluru is relatively busy due to Tourists going back and forth, otherwise, we would have probably seen no cars at all... The funny thing is, if you look at Uluru and Alice Springs on a map, they seem right next to each other. The distances in this country are so vast, they boggle the mind. Australia is actually home to the longest stretch of perfectly straight road in the world, a 400-kilometre-section of highway between Adelaide in South Australia, and Perth on the West Coast, some 2000 kilometres away. Or, as an Australian said:" You may think you know some lengthy roads, but this is long with a vengeance."

Anyway, back to the show.

The other interesting thing about Australia is that to help with the exploration of the outback in the 19th century, the Ozzies imported a bunch of Afghan camels and their camel drivers (if you can't see the connection to the above picture, click on it, and all will be revealed ;-) ). After they had done their job, the camel drivers went back to Afghanistan, but didn't bother to take their camels. Now, 150 years later, Australia is home to more wild camels than any other country on earth!

Once we arrived at King's Canyon, we went for a 3-hour walk along the rim of the canyon along a very well-made footpath:

One thing that really impressed me was the almost perfect balance the people who built and maintain this footpath have struck between convenience/safety and preservation: It seems they have taken great care to create the footpath out of as much natural material as possible, using as little concrete as possible. And, wherever they had to use concrete, they tried to make it as "natural" and as inconspicuous as possible. In general, they seemed to have made an effort to leave the Canyon as untouched by human hands as possible, while still making it reasonably safe.

From the top of the canyon, we had a breathtaking view out of the mouth of the canyon into the flat, barren outback, which gave us another impression as to the vastness of this land:



To be coninued