Uluru -jujuu!

Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kata Tjuta (The Olgas), sunset and full moon rise, red wine, happy kids and happy parents, Internet, all from a lonesome red sand dune a few kilometers East of the entry to the national park - whithin which bushcamping is not tolerated... So we chose a little track off the highway and crossed spinifex until the track vanished - much in style like the Hay River Track 10 days ago. It feels good to be out here - even the Prado is back in it's element after 650 kilometers of monotonous sealed roads.

Kids are already in the tent now, watching a video, while Anh-Dao and I are enjoying a few quiet moments watching the moon-lit landscape and the upper two third of the now cool shimmering rockstar... It's freezing cold once it gets dark, but that's the price for not having a single cloud. We're measuring 6 degrees C. Weather forecast for next 6 days: sunny, 1 to 20 degrees C.
No dingos out there for the moment, despite the huge crystal ball dominating everything. No worries, the kids have regularly practiced shouting Go Away at sighting of any dingo. As for the snakes, shouting won't help as these legless creatures are also deaf at least here in Australia. We were told to either run away if the snake was more than a meter away. If closer, we'd need to remain still like a tree trunk... Apparently they'd be less frightened, and would forget about the disturbance a minute later or so, and calmly sneak away, often right past in between the legs... Anh-dao prefers the preventative approach: Always wear thick boots and trousers, walk making loud steps to alarm them from far, and carry a stick or stone to distract the snake in case of an encounter. Not that we've seen more snakes here than there would be anywhere along the East Coast...
Tomorrow we'll enter the park on a three days pass and explore as much as we can from as close as we can, except for snakes and other little nasties...