4WD around OZ - Part 2:

Sydney to the Red Centre (Ayers Rock)

JUNE 2001 from Brads email

G'day from the middle of Australia!!!

The past week has been incredible...with stunning scenery, awesome camping,the tiniest weirdest small towns you've ever seen, and Aussie animals everywhere! We've been out in the middle of nowhere, I mean nowhere! with dingos, kangaroos, emus, hawks, parrots, crows, horses, cows, sheep, rabbits, goats roaming freely and just the barren land and the full moon.

The animals mind their own business, but the bush flies are up your nose, in your mouth and ears, and on your ass if you need to cop a squat! I now know what it feels like to be a cow or a piece of shit!

We are already professional campers, gourmet campfire cooks, and dirt covered, smelly m*#@r f$#@*rs! Our chauffeur, mechanic, and new buddy Jeff is a great travel companion...he's the ultimate Aussie Yobbo, and a laugh a minute. He also is a walking Aussie encyclopedia, so he has been an awesome our guide and conversationalist over long drives and late campfires.

We're learning lots about Oz's history and aboriginal people; we've sampled the local fare from a honey farm, an orchard, and a few authentic roadhouses; we've seen a 'painted desert', meteor craters, the biggest opal mining town on Earth (1.5 million mine shafts!) which is 70% underground and has an 18-hole dirt golf course, and been regularly getting drunk under the
Aussie outback stars with horizons as far as the eye can see. It is truly magical. Not to mention my grandma's house (which has the best apple pie on Earth).

We are now in the "red center", and by the time we get to the west coast,everything we own will be permanently red from all this lovely oxidized dirt. We just had our weekly shit, shower, and shave, our monthly email run,and our yearly laundry stop...it just doesn't get any better than this, I tell ya!

I'll throw a steak on the campfire for you!

Brad