The view from the window on our flight into the interior gave us a preview of things to come with seemingly endless vistas of red sand and rock. As Europeans it feels crazy that you can fly for 3 hours  across the same country and still only be half way across, let alone trying to comprehend the vast sparsely inhabited emptiness. 

As usual on the flight Baby Barrett charmed the cabin crew by providing liberal flashes of his big blue eyes. It only took one glance in her direction and it was love at first sight. Jamie’s gaze locked with BB’s during safety briefing and the romance began.

As was inevitable with such a whirlwind romance, hearts were broken when we landed and they had to go their separate ways 😒

We imagined Ayers Rock (Uluru) in person would be similar to seeing the Taj Mahal – bear with us here. Of course it is stunning and you have seen pictures of it again and again but in person it offers something much more. The Taj offered majestic beauty, calmness and a bit of sadness (not just because of that Princess Di photo 😉). 

Ayers Rock was majestic too but also glowing with a welcoming warmth. The colour of the rock was amazing and it changed as the sun moved lower in the sky. The sunset was just beautiful although only one of us can attest to this. The other two headed home for bed and bath…

The real surprise of the visit were the Olgas (Kata Tjuta). Huge boulder rocks with gorges running through them. We headed out at sunrise (all three this time)…a hideous 4:45am get up but it was worth it for the wonderful views

This was followed by a walk through the Valley of the Winds at 6:30am. The heat meant the early start was essential for BB but we didn’t complete the full 5km loop as we didn’t want him dehydrating. 

Nevertheless we paid in spades for the early get up. We had imagined a family nap later in the day to catch up on the lost sleep – oh how naive we are as BB had other ideas!!

A quick thanks for all the comments we have received on the blog. Seems likes Baby Barrett’s submission was a big hit so for those of you wondering how much fun the bubba is having, fear not, Ayers Rock resort had a swimming pool. 

Without thermal warmth we’d become accustomed to in NZ we weren’t sure if we would have fun, but we did. In fact BB had more fun than Mum; “I have to get in the pool, if my son can handle the temperate so can I… squeal!!!!”.

In general we could take or leave the Ayers Rock resort itself. The restaurants were pretty poor (of course we were too tight to spend money on the posh ones) so the highlight of our evenings there was watching ‘Eddie the Eagle’ one night in our appartmrnt and hoping that BB has crazy dreams of greatness of his own when he gets older. 

It got to the high 30s each day and as expected we sheltered indoors mainly from 10am – 4pm. So after a few days once we’d seen the sights it was time to move on.

The next stop was Queensland and the Barrier Reef. By now we’d found our routine for the flights so we’d buckled BB in and settled into the safety briefing as usual. Then we noticed that something down the isle was distracting BB… there she was again, Jamie, the romance was back on!

PS. Thanks Jamie for looking after the 3 of us so well on both flights 😊

PPS. Dear reader, Baby Barrett is 6 months old on November 9th. We’ll try to celebrate in style…watch this space.