Australia is famous for their animals and how many poisonous ones they have and how quickly they can kill you. Luckily you never see most of these animals unless you purposely seek them out in a zoo or reptile house. The outback has their own breed of "deadly" animals that won't kill you but will slowly drive you crazy. The blasted, bloody, infernal, leave me alone, go away from me, dang it fly. They are not big flies but there have got to be millions of them. They only want a sip of moisture but to get that sip, they'll try and find it from your eyes, your mouth, your nose, sweat off your skin, your ears, well, you get the picture.
                We didn't have much trouble with these flies in Darwin or Perth. In Darwin we noticed a few but they were quickly shooed away. We noticed also a "fly net" that you could wear over your head either on top of your hat or under it. Kind of laughed about it a lot and about how dorky it would look. The price was around $7 and we thought that rather high for a piece of net. In Alice Springs, the flies were a little more persistent and a lot more in evidence. It was getting hotter and the flies were getting thirstier. Still, managed to go for a couple of days before I caved in and bought one. Now I paid $8.50. I only wore it out at the Alice Springs Desert Park but I was very glad to have it and didn't care that I was the only dorky one.
                In the meantime, my husband was perfecting his "wave". It's very much like the one the queen uses. You must be economical in movement because you could be waving a very long time. It doesn't take much effort to get the flies to leave your face but they are quickly back and very persistent. I found that even with the net over my head, I still liked to do the wave because having a bunch of flies sitting on the net in front of my eyes was still bothersome.
                We move on to the Ayers Rock Resort and my husband broke down and bought one on the advice of the ladies who set up the tours for us. Now it cost us $9.95. On our first tour, both of the nets paid for themselves totally. The flies are out in great numbers although the Aussies said they will be even worse as it gets hotter. Everyone is doing the Uluru wave now. We never saw a guide with a net over his head. That must be too touristy for them to use and possibly they are told they have to tough it out and be real "outback men and women". They have the wave totally perfected. Not much effort, wave the hand, dislodge the flies going one way and then wave back the other way and dislodge the flies again. I'm still doing it even with the net because I just don't like them settling on me. Every once in awhile, one of the flies will find the way into the net and then I have to take it off and get him out which means I am frantically waving for the few seconds that this takes. Getting back onto the bus after a tour is a challenge because the flies follow you into the bus.  
                Early morning before the sun rises and after the sun sets in the afternoon are the best times because the flies are off sleeping somewhere. When there is a nice strong wind going, there aren't many flies either. They are being blown elsewhere to plague someone else. The Uluru wave is the first thing most tourists learn once they get here, I think. Luckily for everyone, it is quick and easy to learn and you get to practice so much more than you would ever want.