We woke at 5am to catch the sunrise over Uluru. In the end we were running a little late and, with kangaroos very active at dawn, we had to take the drive rather slow and were disappointed not to see any. We arrived at the rock to find hordes of early risers lining the road at the designated ’sunrise view point making it hard to find a spot to get a clear photograph of the rock.
We found a spot just in time to see the sun peeking out and took some photographs before driving round to the Waterhole Walk to the south of Uluru. It was a short, pleasant and relatively shady walk – already the temperatures were soaring. The Mala walk was also enjoyable and gave a chance to see an ‘unweathered’ chunk of rock, revealing the true grey colour.
Returning to the hotel, we checked out and drove back to the airport and returned the car. We had noticed that one of the front grills was missing and had no idea if it was before or after we got hold of it. We were relieved that the Hertz desk didn’t ask.
It was only a small plane on the trip to Perth – we were pleasantly surprised to receive a beef stew, potatoes, vegetables, a bread roll and a Mars bar, oh and pretzels for a snack. All very nice.
We arrived in perth at 2:30pm and managed to hop on the AUS$6 public bus instead of the AUS$24 on the shared shuttle bus. It took around 45 minutes to reach the centre of town and were perfectly placed to pick up our car from Hertz. Because we had picked the car up from town instead of the airport, we saved around AUS$100 on the rental – and the even better news was that we could return it to the airport without charge. Bonus! The car was an almost new white Toyota Corolla with around 10,000km on the clock.
We drove over to 12:01 East backpackers hostel, only to find that parking on the street was limited to 2 hours maximum, and paid tickets up until 5pm. The obnoxious German youth manning the text was good enough to laugh when it was suggested this should be on the Hostelworld web site instead of ‘on street parking’ – “It is the same in all cities”, well thanks, but that isn’t true and how are we supposed to know Perth?
Still, it worked out well as we drove of to a huge shopping centre called Garden City where we bought just about everything for our camping adventure. We spend AUS$177 which got us a tent, bedding, stove, chairs, inflatable mattress and pump, plates, cutlery, bucket, cleaning equipment, a knife… fantastic value! It was great fun and when we were done we headed down to the food court which had a great selection of world cuisines (although Laura went for the Kentucky variety).
We then returned to the hostel, and once checked in we found it to be by far the worst we have encountered – unclean, poor staff, poor shower facilities with no private areas to get dried in. Basic and grubby, and not particularly cheap. They also insisted that we pay $20 deposit for the two keys – we didn’t have the cash and although we only wanted one key and the German fellow would have none of it.
We then told him we would be leaving before the desk opened in the morning, at which point no deposit was needed!
Anyway, we took a shower and went to bed.
