We are now in the very center of Australia, after two months of turning round and round the southern half waiting for the rains to stop. (The fact that it is raining yet again today in Alice is pure coincidence, I'm told.) We have kept busy - we just shipped back 244 rolls of film - and explored more of Australia every day.

Before heading north at last we spend five days on Kangaroo Island south of Adelaide. It is large island 150 km long and 55 km wide that has magnificent scenery and plentiful wildlife. Australian sea lions and New Zealand fur seals still shelter on its beaches, lying up in the dunes between fishing trips. Koalas peer down from their gum trees unconcerned by our cameras. Small Tammar wallabies and larger Western gray kangaroos are everywhere - dingoes and foxes were never introduced here. Their worst enemy is the automobile. Carcasses litter the roadside everywhere which saddened us. It seems like such a waste but the local farmers who consider them a pest are probably jubilant.

Many years ago I read about a rare marsupial called the bilby. It is so rare that I was sure I would never see it alive. After all, its close relatives the Lesser bilby and the pig-footed Bandicoot are both extinct. It looks like the living fossil it is - a mousy color, huge ears, pointed snout and a thick tail, an animal designed by a committee during the Pleistocene. And not too bright. It digs a burrow where it shelters from the sun coming out during the cool nights in the desert. Aboriginals claim it is good eating - "good tucker" as they say. Now a few sanctuaries and zoos are breeding them and it may hang on but it may never repopulate its original range.

The fox, cat and dingo think it is good tucker too. So it was a treat to see the bilby at last, hopping awkwardly in the sand of the Yookamurra sanctuary and at the Desert Park in Alice Springs. If you want to learn more about Australia's efforts to breed these endangered species read our special feature article on Sanctuaries.

The rains that we have been complaining about created a unique opportunity for us. Lake Eyre was in flood for the fourth time in 100 years - causing it to go from rock-hard salt pan to vast shallow lake in a matter of weeks. We flew over the lake for four hours, zooming down on sand bars where hundreds of pelicans caught the thermals in lazy circles, leaving their young huddled shoulder to shoulder in crèches on the beach below. From the air it still seemes a flat surface devoid of life even though it is teeming with fish, seed shrimps and water fleas that can withstand the briny conditions. Its shores gleam with white salt bands, the shallows a startling pink color.

In a few months the sun will bake it all dry again. As the water evaporates, the salinity will increase killing the life within one species at a time and the birds will depart to new fishing grounds. Salt will blanket the bottom until it looks like a snowdrift in the middle of the desert.

Ever since our arrival last September everyone has talked to us about Ayre's Rock, or Uluru as it is now known, having reverted back to its original aboriginal name. Ayre's rock is the Australian landmark in the same way that the Eiffel tower IS Paris. So we went to see it.

It rises out of the red sandy desert like a huge wrinkled monolith - grandiose, majestic, overbearing. Buses disgorge endless camera toting tourists at its base who stand and gawk while the pluckier ones climb its sheer walls. Straight up and straight down. Coming down they cling to the chain imbedded into the smooth cliffs, their feet slipping and sliding, their faces contorted with fear and pain. I did not climb the Rock but watched through binoculars the long string of ants snaking its way up the smooth red wall. 32 people have died from heatstroke, heart attack and falls doing this over the years. Bronze plaques screwed into the cliff commemorate their failed ascents but no one pauses to read them, too eager to scramble to the top.

We are now headed to Darwin at the Top End. It is sunny and warm there. No more freezing dawns as we huddle in our warmest gear waiting for a dawn scenic to materialize.