Australia Bicycle Touring Trip Trip Itinerary
An eight-month cycling trip down under. We spent five months touring the remarkable North and South Islands of New Zealand, then three months riding into Australia's magnificent outback.
Australia Bicycle Touring Trip Route Map © Lonely Planet Destination Australia
Neil and Sharon say Two Thumbs-up to:
Outback spirituality, the bizarre mix of mammals and marsupials, exotic brilliantly-coloured birds, and Sydney, a city worth visiting (never thought I would be recommending a city!).
Australia Trip Summary:
It took us three months to cycle from Sydney to Alice Springs via the Oodnadatta Track, Uluru, and the West MacDonnell Range. The Australian outback is a stark contrast to Canada and New Zealand. We were intrigued by these differences.
© Lonely Planet says:
Australia is an enormous country, and visitors expecting to see an opera in Sydney one night and meet Crocodile Dundee the next will have to re-think their grasp of geography. It is this sheer vastness, and the friction between the ancient land steeped in Aboriginal lore and the New World culture being heaped upon it, which gives Australia much of its character. The world's sixth largest country, Australia measures some 4000km east to west and 3200km north to south. Much of the interior of the country is flat, barren and extremely sparsely populated.
Uluru (Ayers Rock)
Uluru is a site of deep cultural significance to the local Anangu Aboriginals and the most famous icon of the Australian outback. A pilgrimage to Uluru and the coronary-inducing scramble to the top was an entrenched Australian ritual, but the Aboriginal owners would prefer visitors not to climb the rock and many visitors are now respecting their wishes. The 3.6km (2.2mi) long rock rises a towering 348m (1141ft) from the pancake-flat surrounding scrub, smack in the middle of the country, and is especially impressive at dawn and sunset when the red rock spectacularly changes hue. There are walks around the base of the rock which pass caves, rock art and sacred Aboriginal sites. Nearby Kata Tjuta (the Olgas), 32km (20mi) west of Uluru, are equally impressive monoliths and Mt Olga is actually much higher than Uluru.
|
|
Book Info
