Day 174 (Monday 02/05) - Adventure Tour Day 1

I slept really bad today, as one of the 2 French guys was snoaring extremely badly ... Even with my earplugs and music I couldn't make abstraction of his terrible snoaring.

The problem is I have to wake up at 5am to catch a bus at 6:20am.
The only day I really needed to sleep well, I couldn't, so classical.

I can still wake up, and surprisingly I'm not too tired.
I go for a shower, quick breakfast and checkout, and head to the meeting point next door.

The bus is almost on time. Waiting with me are 2 Norwegian girls, and the Canadian guy from my room.

The driver is Luke, an Australian from Alice Springs, really cool (dread locks, green sunglasses and cowboy hat ...).

A few minutes later, 2 girls talking Dutch get in the bus. I will later realise that they're from Belgium (Antwerpen) !
In the bus there's already 6 persons : 5 older Polish (2 couples and a woman), and 1 young English guy (Byron).

We have to quickly go to the office to check-in and to pick up 3 other persons (that are actually trainees for the company).
So in total we will be a group of 15 + the driver, which is not too bad (it's a good number actually).

Our first stop is in Clare, for a toilet + coffee stop.
The weather for the day doesn't look good, it's very cloudy, and pretty cold ...

As we get back in the bus, Luke asks us to come one by one in front of the bus to introduce ourselves (saying a few things as name, what we're doing in life, where and for how long we've been travelling, etc.).

Outside it's now raining ...
Our next stop is Melrose (again for a toilet break).
There's not much to see there, appart from Mount Remarkable, a mountain that is apparently falling appart ...
There's also a small swinging bridge.

After that, we take the road again, to go to today's destination, Quorn, where we will stay tonight (and tomorow night).

We're staying at "The Mill", an old house transformed into a hostel.

It's quite cozy, it's a good place.
We're there just on time for lunch, so we start preparing everything.
While preparing the salad and vegetables, we talk a bit to each other.
One of the 2 Flemish girls, Liz, knows Hamme-Mille, she has her uncle living in Bossut, and her horse in Nethen !
(the world is so small ...)
We're having a BBQ, with camel burgers !
Camel meat is actually good, never tried it before, but here it's very common.
　
After eating and dishwashing, we go to the rooms.
I'm in a 8 beds dorm, with the 2 Norwegians girls (Kine & Katrina), the 2 Flemish girls, Byron and Mike, the Canadian guy.
(there's one free bed, and luckily it's the one on top of me :-) ).

We then get back in the coach to head to Warren Gorge close to the Flinders Ranges, for a walking trail of about 5km.
The walk is nice, with a beautiful scenery.
We get to see some yellow footed rock wallabies, as well as a lot of spiders (quite big and ugly, but apparently not too dangerous).

After this good walk, we head back to the hostel, where we have 2 hours to chill before dinner.
For dinner tonight we have beef burgers, camel sausages and kangaroo steak (accompagnied by salad potato salad, pasta salad and bread) ... Really nice !
While eating, we all talk together and get to know each other better.

Later on, some of us go to the TV room to watch a movie.
The choice is not big, we go for Zoolander ... (bad movie, but still funny)