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Freya: Sara, come and look.

Uncle Bob is visiting Australia’s Northern Territory.

It’s huge, more than five times bigger than the UK, but very few people live there.

Australia has some very long roads.

Uncle Bob drove along the Stuart Highway in his car for two days, past a town called Alice Springs, and then over to Uluru.

Sara: What’s that?

Freya: It’s an enormous rock, more than three kilometres long, made of sandstone. It was named Uluru by the original people of Australia, who believe it’s sacred.

Many thousands of years ago they made paintings in its caves.

Sara: Ah yes, some people call it Ayers Rock.

Freya: Uncle Bob then took a hot air balloon ride to Alice Springs.

Sara: The centre of Australia is a desert called the Outback. It gets very little rain and it gets much hotter than anywhere in the UK.

Freya: That’s Kings Canyon, a beautiful gorge, which is a narrow valley between two steep mountains.

Sara: Ah, and there goes the flying doctor. The outback is so big doctors need planes to visit their patients!

Freya: Uncle Bob finally landed in Alice Springs, which is almost exactly in the middle of Australia.

It’s the biggest town in the outback.

Sara: Oh look, the famous Henley-on-Todd Regatta. It’s a big boat race. How exciting! Let’s look, Freya.

Uhhh?

Freya: Alice Springs is such a dry place that the river has no water, so teams run holding their boats instead. Haha!

Sara, where have you gone?

Sara: I’ve built my own boat! Haha.