{"id":4057,"date":"2010-11-10T09:34:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-10T09:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/?p=4057"},"modified":"2017-07-22T14:33:31","modified_gmt":"2017-07-22T13:33:31","slug":"day-115-ants-in-my-pants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/expedition-updates\/day-115-ants-in-my-pants\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 115 : Ants in my pants"},"content":{"rendered":"

High Point: A cheeky beer in the Uluru Fire Station<\/p>\n

Low Point: Ants in my pants<\/p>\n

Quote of the day:\u00a0 \u201cPaul, do you know where our window is?\u201d<\/p>\n

We woke up in the middle of nowhere.\u00a0 You might think this a bit of an exaggeration but we were roughly 500km from the nearest bit of civilisation.\u00a0 Civilisation in this case was the Docker River community with a population in the low teens.\u00a0 We had just spent the night camping on a dried up river bed.\u00a0 It was us, Martha and what seemed like a billion busy little biting ants.\u00a0 Todays plan: head into the Uluru Nation park and explore the big rock.<\/p>\n

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\u2026<\/p>\n

\"Day<\/a>As we were driving through the outback, all of a sudden, out of nowhere popped up the impressive Uluru, Ayers Rock as it was formerly known.\u00a0 From a distance it seemed unreal.\u00a0 Almost as if someone had drawn it into the horizon.\u00a0 This prompted the crew to explore some more creative theories on how the rock came about.\u00a0 We all know the scientific explanation of rock formations over millions of years, but that\u2019s not fooling us.\u00a0 I will now present the evidence (your honour\u2026)<\/p>\n

As keen followers you would have seen us visit the Super Pit recently, which is the same width and length as Uluru.\u00a0 The Super Pit is currently 450 metres deep.\u00a0 Any guesses on how high Uluru is?\u00a0 That\u2019s right, 450 metres.\u00a0 Is it possible that the Australian government came up with a scheme to create jobs and increase tourism?\u00a0 Dig a massive hole, create a cover and say it\u2019s a gold mine, then dump the rock in the middle of nowhere and tell the foreigners its a natural occurrence?\u00a0 Why aren\u2019t people allowed to climb the rock any more?? Maybe its a sacred ground, or maybe they just haven\u2019t finished the top bit and don\u2019t want you to see the scaffolding!\u00a0 Why are parts of the rock hollow? Maybe its a natural fault in the rock, or maybe its shoddy craftsmanship!\u00a0 To avoid any law suits, I\u2019ll let you draw your own conclusions\u2026<\/p>\n

By the time we rolled into Yulara (the tourist resort next to Uluru) it was already getting dark and the town was starting to look a bit shifty.\u00a0 We all had zero interest in camping again and were in dire need of a shower and a bed.\u00a0 Queue Jim, the Chief of Yulara Fire Station.\u00a0 Jim is one of the two full time firemen looking after the resort and the surrounding area.\u00a0 Uluru is staffed by two full time firemen, which is typical for the whole of the Northern Territory.\u00a0 NT has under 150 full time fire fighters to look after an area of 36,000 km2<\/sup>!\u00a0 After a few minutes of explaining the trip (and a couple of gentle hints) we were being offered the Visiting Officer Quarters.\u00a0 BOOM!\u00a0 Shower, bed, kitchen, did I mention the shower?\u00a0 We ended up spending the rest of the night enjoying the hospitality and eating cheesy garlic bread in the rec room.\u00a0 I\u2019m very sad and ashamed to report that I lost at pool that night.\u00a0 I can only put it down to exhaustion.\u00a0 It sure wasn\u2019t Paul or Steve\u2019s pool skills!<\/p>\n

Fuad<\/p>\n

[flickr album=72157625245988145 num=30 size=Square]<\/p>\n

[flickr album=72157625246002507 num=30 size=Square]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

High Point: A cheeky beer in the Uluru Fire Station Low Point: Ants in my pants Quote of the day:\u00a0 \u201cPaul, do you know where our window is?\u201d We woke up in the middle of nowhere.\u00a0 You might think this a bit of an exaggeration but we were roughly 500km from the nearest bit of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-expedition-updates","category-perth-to-brisbane"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4057"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5966,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057\/revisions\/5966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}