The thing about being in the desert is that temperatures fluctuate wildly. So when I got up at 4 a.m. on Day Two of the Red Centre Death March, it was actually cool, what you would expect on a spring day.

    And then, within a few hours of the sun coming up, the thermometer rocketed up to 34 Celsius which is roughly 93F or to put it in technical terms, stupidly hot. I am an eighth generation Canuckian, bred to The Great White North. I do not take heat like this well.

    After oohing and ahhhing over the beauty of Uluru as the sun rose and painted the mesa red, we and the other 385,000 tourists there with us that day had two options--to climb the rock (which the Aboriginal owners frown upon) or to take the 9 kilometer (or about 5.5 mile) hike around it. Smug in my political correctness, I opted to hike around Uluru.

    Here I am at the beginning of the hike, leaning against Uluru. There are a few things you need to know to set the scene for what happened next. See that big beige canvas bag slung over my shoulder? It holds a container with a litre's worth of spring water.

    *Insert ominous organ chord of your choice here.*

    This was only our second day of the tour and I had been chafing over the regimentation of it all. So when our tour guide pointed out the bathrooms at the beginning of the hike and suggested we all use them, I decided not to as a sort of declaration of my independence.

    *Insert ominous organ chord of your choice here.*

    The ability of a woman's bladder to contain fluids is inverse to her age. Young women can drink a case of beer and not blink. I, however, am older than dirt which means I am now the proud possessor of a bladder roughly the size of a peanut.

    A cranky, hyper sensitive peanut, at that.

    *Insert slightly louder ominous organ chord of your choice here.*

    Normally I'm quite aware of the situation, but I have to tell you that Uluru is so beautiful that I forgot myself. Every time we turned another corner in the trail we had another vista and they were all spectacular. It was hot, though, and I kept swigging my water and …

    *Insert VERY loud ominous chord of your choice here.*

    By about two-thirds of the way around Uluru, the bottle was empty and I was receiving what polite society would term "a call of nature." Only this was my cranky, middle-aged woman bladder, so it was more of a scream of outrage.

    Fine.

    The thing is, there was not a bathroom in sight. There wouldn't be one until the end of the hike.

    Fine.

    Now let me make it clear that I'm not afraid to pee outdoors. Heck, I LIVE in the woods, so answering a call of nature in nature's bosom does not upset me. However, peeing in the outdoors in my part of Canada is a whole other ballgame from peeing outdoors in Oz.

    I was halfways across the globe from home, in a country that is known for its poisonous critters. Not only were there deadly spiders, heck eleven of the world's fifteen most poisonous snakes are found in Australia.

    The last thing I wanted to do was to slip off into the bush, drop my jeans, and have some poisonous snake latch on to my nether regions. I NEVER want to hear the words, "Will you look at the size of the asp on that woman?" uttered about me.

    So I decided to try to hold it.

    That lasted about a kilometer and then I decided to try to walk into the bush.

    I'd seen enough nature shows about Australia to be aware of spinifex grass, about how it's very sharp and prickly and has little silicate spears on its ends. So before I marched into it, I gingerly touched the round balls at the top.

    They were prickly, but no worse than a Canadian burr, so I confidently began to wade through the spinifex towards a more secluded area.

    What I had touched, my guide later explained, was a seed pod and the most benign part of spinifex. The business end of spinifex is down near the bottom, right at ankle height. I was searingly aware of that fact after I had walked about two strides into the grass from hell.

    Fine. Back to the trail.

    You know, if they ever amend the gait of Olympic race walking to something that involves walking pigeon toed with knees locked, even at my advanced years I'm a shoe-in for the gold. I covered the last stretch of the hike in that very position in record time, a humbled woman.

    From then on in, when the guide told us it was time to pee, I dutifully marched off the bus and peed.

    There are times when free will is a highly overrated thing.