Following our 2 nights on the beach we moved inland and headed to Rosegums Wilderness Retreat. Just such a gorgeous place. We had three nights there in a tree house from which we could just see rainforest.

We didn’t run but we walked the 4 walking trails the retreat listed – 2 shorter ones and 2 longer ones. We looked for wildlife and hoped to see the inhabitants of platypus creek. We saw turtles there but no platypuses so here’s one from Yungaburra instead.

So while we didn’t run there, it did us good to relax, walk, sit and watch the rainbow lorikeets, sulphur crested parrots and countless small birds, listening to the rainforest noises and searching for the rather shy musky rat kangaroo.

All too soon it was time to leave and head for Brisbane where we did run. After Brisbane we headed for Alice Springs to join a tour to Uluru. We didn’t run on the tour. We had taken our gear just in case the opportunity arose but it didn’t. Although if we had thought about it more carefully we probably could have run round the base of Uluru – we walked it and just had a meeting point at the end of the walk so we could have just waited for everyone there. I have the GPS from that walk but I’m not sure if the satellite image includes any sacred sites which shouldn’t be depicted so I’m not posting it here. If anyone knows if it is ok to post the image let me know, we were careful not to take pictures in those areas and if the satellite picture from Strava is not ok I’ll delete it off everything. I just don’t know and google isn’t giving very clear answers on this.

After several hours on the minibus on day 1 we arrived at Kata Tjuta and had a little walk. Day 2 we did a walk round the base of Uluru at sunrise and had the chance to hear from an aboriginal women who showed us some of the rock drawings and told us about her people’s history and traditions. On the final day we had a longish walk at Watarrka with some stunning views most of which my phone camera has completely failed to capture. I was actually really happy with my fitness level as the steep steps up didn’t really bother me at all.

After Alice Springs we headed for Sydney and more running.