| The Red Centre |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| The long lonely road east of Camooweal headed toward Mt. Isa |
| Huge roadtrains blast down the only accessible small dirty track- don't get in their way! |
| A group of butterflies sips from a puddle on the Stuart Highway |
| One of the baby camels at the roadhouse in Renner Springs |
| Tourisits can go on camel safari here at Renner Springs, just east of Uluru (Ayers Rock) |
| A patiently waiting camel at Renner Springs |
| Little Corellas are found in abundance in central Australia |
| The proud overland trekker poses happily in front of his territorial campsite in Alice Springs |
| A bat who got caught on a barbwire fence. We've seen many similar examples of animals getting snared or impacted by human infrastructure. |
| The Winston Churchill rock just off the Stuart Highway north of Tennant Creek - nice cigar! |
| At the roadhouse in Curtin Springs - the last stop before Uluru |
| The old wreckage of a WW" fighter plane at the Daly Waters airport in the middle of nowhere. There's a lot of history just lying around out there. |
| The Daly Waters pub is the real thing, Cattle ranchers fill the place every evening and the place has a true ble fair dinkum Aussie atmosphere. |
| We always carry a lot of water in the van, and this is one of the many thirsty animals we stopped to help out. |
| A rather sinister-looking Emu at one of the campgrounds |
| Up in the Gulf Country there were toads everywhere |
| ... and green tree frogs |
| After spending an evening photographing a full moon rising over Uluru, the clouds took on crazy patterns |
| Mangroves and a nice sunset along a popular fishing spot on the Gulf of Carpenteria |
| A Skate fish sadly having its last day in the sun beached on the gulf coast |
| Mangroves and a nice sunset along a popular fishing spot on the Gulf of Carpenteria |
| The huge vertical drop at Kings Canyon |
| There many of these attractive quail-like birds around Kings Canyon |
| Kings Canyon is also a great place to find chalk-white ghost gum trees growing out of seemingly inhospitable red rock |
| In the gulf country, where suddenly the dry red earth gave way to vast wetlands, suddenly there was insect life in abundance, including this impressivel large praying mantis. |
| When it'S this hot, it's no problem to sleep under the stars |
| Camping beneath the Devlis Marbles is a sort of unique setting |
| Cool guy Ian posing beneath giant boulders at the Devils Marbles (with full moon rising) |
| Anonymous figures help lend a sense of scale to the huge stones at the Devils Marbles |
| The landscape at the Devils Marbles feels a bit like being on the moon |
| Trying to defy gravity at the marbles. This shot seems to be the most popular and appears in many travel books. |
| OK, one more picture of the Marbles - but I think they're pretty impressive. |
| The Mataranka Springs are truly an osasis in an otherwise dry and barren land. Many people don't even know about, and it is well worth the diversion. |
| Mount Conner, when seen from a great distance, is often mistaken for Uluru - and in fact it's even bigger. |
| This is the town of Mount Isa (or simply "The Isa") as people call it. It's a huge iron mining town full of rough characters, but it boasts a skyline of what I like to call "outback clouds" - white, broken, and evenly spaced. |
| In the Gulf Coast town of Normanton, there is a full-scale replica of the largest crocodile ever discovered abck in the 1930's. Many scientists believe that crocs of this size were one abundant. |
| The wetlands of the guld coast produce vast fields of wildflowers. |
| The Olgas may not seem as grand and monlithic as Uluru, but in fact they are much taller and perhaps even more captivating |
| Here's another stretch of long straight road leading through the dusty red earth leading away from Uluru. |
| If you look very carefully, you may see the relativel tiny group of people shuffling along the base of one of the Olgas great masses. Their colour changes dramatically as the sun passes over throughout the day. |
| One of the icons of outback highway travel is this massive road train, in this case loaded up with cattle. |
| Some of the spiders we found in the area around Uluru were impressvely large and clourful |
| This is the "famous" Stuart Tree, near Daly Waters, where the equally famous early explorer celebrated his arrival at the springs by carving a big "S" in its trunk. |
| This Thorny Devil was standing motionles right in the middle of the Stuart Highway. He remained frozen for the photoshoot, and then we helped him get off the road before somebody less observant came along and squashed him. When we got him into the grass beside the road it was easy to see how they are so difficult to spot. |