Australian Outback - Australia
"...the vastness and emptiness of Australia..."
As I travelled trough the outback by car two times a month for about 2 years, I have made the following discovery.
Australia is very VERY big with very long stretches of road where in the outback you do not see a petrol station for 500km. I myself had to turn my car around once, because a petrol station had run out of gas. Having to go back 170km just to fill up the car, that is a 340km 3.5 hour detour.
If you are from another country especially Europe, you do not fully understand the vastness and emptiness of Australia even if you think you do, you really don't. This following story
I have heard from too many tourists, this is totally insane.
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Buy that cheap US$1700 car in Sydney, and yes, the VW combi vans are still an all time favorite.
Then drive it all the way up the coast to the reef, then across to Darwin down to see a red coloured rock named Ayers Rock or Uluru (why, it's a rock far away from anywhere) and then to Melbourne where you expect to sell the car at a good price again. This journey is 7000 kilometres long, multiply that by three and you have driven further than it takes a plane to fly you back to Europe again, Australia is a huge place.
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September 28th, 2006 by Eduardo Manchón
Wow! That's was my first impression when I saw the satellite photo from Ayers Rock / Uluru , a red sandstone rock formation from central Australia. The rock is 346 metres high and has a perimeter of 8 km.
Ayers Rock appears to change colour around the day and year, as you can see in the photos from the mini-panoramio above. That's because of minerals like feldspar reflect the red light of sunrise and sunset. The rock gets its rust colour from oxidation and during wet periods it changes to grey.
There is a lot of superstition around Ayers Rock. Aborigines do not climb Ayers Rock because of spiritual significance, there are restricted areas for photos and you are supposed to suffer misfortune if you take away stones from the area.
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