Red Centre
Australia

Alice Springs, main gateway to Australia's Red Centre.

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Many tours to Uluru start from the town of Alice Springs, 400kms (250mls) away. It takes about 5 hours to get from town to rock with little entertainment en route, though you could fly direct from Alice (or Sydney, Cairns, Perth) to Yulara (Ayers Rock Resort) if time was more important than money to you.

Warning: Alice Springs is home to a sad and lost aboriginal community of around 3,000 living in appalling and inappropriate 'town camps' that trigger alcoholism and violence. In 2007 The Alice won first prize in three gruesome statistical races: Stabbing capital of the world; highest murder rate in Australia; and clearly not unconnected, the highest rate of alcohol consumption in Australia.

The government is making an effort to resolve Alice's aboriginal problems with emergency intervention and changes to the welfare scheme, but it hasn't worked.

Tourists are harassed, attacked and robbed regularly. Local businesses have had enough and are shutting up shop, leaving the high street to the 'Grog shops' that supply aboriginals of all ages with large quantities of strong liquor daily.

Alice Springs (population 60,000) is not a wildly interesting town and hardly worth making a special effort to see, though it does have some reasonable but pricey restaurants, lively bars and a couple of culture shows.

'The Alice' (as she is known to locals) is an appropriate introduction to the Red Centre - usually hot and home to a zillion irritating bush flies that want to suck your liquids, preferably straight off your eyeballs, though even backpacker places in The Alice tend to have god-given swimming pools to shelter in.

The long and not-winding road from Alice Springs to Uluru with a herd of buses paused at a roadhouse.

The 400kms, 5 hours to Uluru, broken only by the occasional road-house stop to pee, intake refreshment or possibly grab a short camel ride, is enlivened by almost nothing outside the vehicle where scrubby bushes and half-dead trees dessicate under the roasting Australian sun and kangaroos resolutely refuse to show their legs.

In other words, don't feel this is a journey you have make! if you have the money, fly there and stay at the resort hotel!

Visitors to King's Canyon not enjoying a rest stop.

No! Flies on me!: Bush Flies are endemic in the Red Centre (Alice Springs, Uluru, The Olgas, Kings Canyon etc) as they breed in cow poo and the area is surrounded by cattle stations. The flies drive tourists crazy for much of the year and beating at them with a hand is not a solution, the little bug***s are suicidally desperate for liquid rich in protein and minerals and humans are the best source, whether it's sweat or eyeball secretion.

Better to pick up a bit of broken eucalyptus and use it as a whisk, but this is not allowed in national parks as rangers assume that if every visitor wanted an anti-fly branch soon the nearby trees would be stripped bare. True.

The best solution, though totally naff, unfashionable and not exactly comfortable, is a bag over the head, or more precisely, an elasticated nylon net. Sometimes this may come built into a hat, or with a little cloth bit at the top, but the selection in the Red Centre is poor, so try to buy beforehand. Cairns has a particularly good selection. $10 well spent, believe it.
The clichéd Australian hats with dangling corks don't work very well as once you stop moving, so do the corks, and bang goes your defensive system.

p.s. The other kind of Australia fly, the Blow Fly, is bigger, slower than the Bush Fly and doesn't bother humans at all. The reason? It breeds in dead flesh, absorbing quite enough protein in the process, so it doesn't need the paltry amount it could collect from sucking a human.

King's Canyon. Not worth the crack, mate. Click to see Uluru Pictures.

King's Canyon is a tour option that extends a basic two-day Uluru and Kata Tjuta trip to three days. Is it worth it? Absolutely not. The rim walk takes a couple of hours and is pleasant with pretty good views, but not worth another 24 hours of flies, heat, dull bus rides, tents and half-baked food, not to mention the extra expense involved.

Those punters who chose not to do the rim walk had a pleasant 15 minute stroll at the base of the canyon...in exchange for what? 24 hours of cost and extended discomfort! Just say no mate!