Alice to the Outback and back

Glenelg

First, I’ll get the rest of Adelaide out of the way: went to the beach at Glenelg a few times. I love that name, Glenelg. Hilarious. It was a beautiful beach with some wonderful shells. Other then that I explored the Botanic Gardens and wondered the streets in the CBD a bit. Adelaide was a bit boring to me, didn’t seem like there was much of anything going on other than the normal routine. I went back to the market on Tuesday and got some awesome tomatoes and a mouth watering avocado, along with some awesome cheese and pumpkin (squash) bread. On Wednesday Kate left Adelaide on the Ghan train, a nice, 24 hour long journey from Adelaide to Alice Springs. I hung around, doing still not much, waiting for the day to end so I could fly out the next morning. Which I did, to Alice Springs; it was a nice short flight.
Upon arrival to Alice I waited around for the free shuttle ride to the hostel and soaked in the heat. Mid 30s, I had finally found Texas-like weather, minus the dry factor. It’s so dry there that it doesn’t feel like 35 in Texas would. Finally at the hostel I checked in and then took advantage of the free wifi for a spell. Later I walked into town and re-confirmed our booking on The Rock Tour. The only thing we were told that we MUST bring was 3L of water each. So I headed over to Woolies and carried 6L of water back to the hostel. Once back at the hostel I took a little dip in the pool and layed out for a short time. Then it was time to pack up for the Outback. If we wanted our baggage stored while we were ‘on tour,’ we needed to have our bags ready to be put away at 6:30pm, since reception closed at 7. It was sort of annoying, but worth it because bringing all that shit into the Outback would’ve sucked.

The Todd River, no joke.

The next morning we were picked up by Joel, our Rock Tour guide, at 6:10am, hopped on the bus, and were off for an Outback adventure.
Now I’m going to try to describe and put into words what I saw in the Outback, but I don’t think it will come close to the actual experience of being out there; there were some amazingly stunning sights and although my pictures are pretty good, they are nothing like the real thing.
Day One of The Rock Tour, took us on a 5hour drive to Kings Canyon. On the way we all went one at a time up to the front of the bus and introduced ourselves and Joel asked us each some odd questions. This was followed by some jokes and interesting animal facts, and other general hilarity, like this Dutch guy Ruben making the weirdest noise ever. We arrived around noon and set off for our 3.5hour hike of the canyon rim. Gorgeousness! Bloody awesome views! The half way point was ‘The Garden of Eden” tucked down in a little canyon-ish area, where there was a cool swimming hole. After the hike and 3L of water consumed we drove for about another hour (saw a wild camel on the way, there are millions of them roaming the Outback since they were introduced by explorers in the 1800s. Many managed to escape or they simply outlived the human they carried and they were free in the Outback to breed and prosper. There are also wild horses, but we didn’t see any) and stopped to pick up fire wood. This was a process and miraculously no one got hurt. Then we stopped for beer. A sign-up sheet went round because we were going to buy in bulk and everyone said how many cans they’d like at $2.40 a pop for the rest of the tour. This was our only liquor run chance. With that sorted we got 3 cases of 30cans of Toohey’s New (not my preferred choice, but oh well) and then found the campsite on the Curtin Springs cattle station land. The fire got going pretty quick by the trio of German surfers, as the rest of us started to prepare dinner. It was past 8pm and we were hungry but it was well worth the wait. We had Chili con carne, roasted veggies, rice, and bush bread (flour, crushed weetbix, garlic, onion, cheese, S&P, herbs, AMAZINGNESS). Dinner was amazing and after cleaning up and chatting a little we were all in our swags by 11pm, trying to stay awake to watch the stars, which were also fucking amazing! We were miles from any sort of lights.
Day Two we were awoken by Joel getting breaky ready. He told us that if we didn’t get up when we heard his breakfast prep noises he would wake us up with a wooden spoon to the ribs. No thanks. So we all rolled up our swags as small as we could and then had breakfast, which was basic: cereal, toast, jam, PB, coffee and tea. Someone managed to contaminate the hot water pot with coffee, it was pretty funny.
After Breaky we piled back in the bus and headed off for a short one hour drive to the Ayers Rock Resort to check in for our campsite. Here we had a chance to fill up our water bottles in preparation for another 3+hour hike, this time at Kata Tjuta (formerly known as The Olga’s, but re-named to their original name in the mid 1980’s when Uluru (Ayers Rock) and surrounds were given back to the Aboriginal People. Although, the highest one is stilled referred to as Mt Olga). There was a pretty thick haze in the air that morning so we couldn’t see Uluru or Kata Tjuta like we should’ve been able to, it was only when we were almost at Kata Tjuta that we could finally see it. And again, it was amazing. A step up from Kings Canyon for sure. We set off for our hike, of over 7km, at around 9:15am. A good thing since there are warning signs saying the hike is closed after 11am because of extreme temperatures (36C/97F). The flies were much worse here. When we stopped a few times for an educational speech by Joel I covered my face with an extra t-shirt I’d brought just for that. Of course, there was the option of wearing a fly net, but they are hot and not cool and expensive ($7+)! Half way through the hike we stopped for a snack of fruit cake, cookies, and crackers. Well earned. On the way back to the bus the flies were getting pretty awful. I could tolerate them except when they crawled in my ears or up my nose. They just tickle so much. Sometime during the hike I realized that my $2NZ sunglasses had cracked. RIP sunnies. We ended up waiting on the bus for some stragglers and Joel made a thong call to Bruce, the head fly, and together they negotiated that the flies would let up after sunset. Deal. We played hangman to pass the time as well. At this time Anton, from Holland, smashed his bottle of red wine on the bus, and it made a big mess. It was cleaned up successfully with toilet paper though.
Next stop was lunch of leftover chili con carne wrapped in tortillas at the Uluru Cultural Centre. Driving in to the cultural centre I had my first glimpse of Uluru and damn was it awesome! I just couldn’t look away. After lunch we had an hour to explore the Cultural Centre. An hour wasn’t nearly enough time, but I still learned quite a bit about the history of the rock, some aboriginal stories/myths surrounding it’s creation, and also a little about the fauna in the area. One cool thing that I wish I would’ve had more time to look at was this binder full of letters called “The Book of Regret.” The letters were all from people who’d visited Uluru at some point and taken a piece of it (like a rock or something) and then felt badly for doing so, mostly because misfortune had seemed to befallen them since taking part of the rock away from Uluru.
Next we took a very short walk at Uluru itself: the Mala Walk. This walk was guided by Joel and he told us all about the Mala people and their stories of the rock’s creation. He also spoke about Aboriginal art, some history, and the actual geological event that lead to Uluru and Kata Tjuta’s existence. He also talked about how you could climb Uluru and basically put across that you could if you wanted but it was greatly frowned upon by the Aboriginals and most other people for that matter. A few of the Germans didn’t get why it was such a bad thing. But when we were there the climb was closed because of the wind and warm temperatures. Everything seems to shut when the temp reaches 36C or higher. Fair I supposed, even though it didn’t feel bad at all to me in such a dry climate.
After the Mala Walk it was time to secure one of three seating areas at the bus tour sunset area. We pulled into the parking lot at the same time as a large coach of high school kids and ran out to claim the area. Success. Then we got the beers out and waited for the sun to set. We took a bunch of pictures, some silly, and had some snobby French girls comment, en francais, that they hated it when people did that (took silly pics). Kate heard her and asked pourquoi, but she either didn’t hear or ignored her. Bitch. The sun began to set and it was beautiful, we had a really nice view of the rock, and he had dinner out there. There were probably about a dozen, if not more, bus loads of people there. After the sun had set and darkness was setting in we went back to the campground, where there was a comfort station, and I think pretty much everyone had a shower. It felt good but totally killed my beer buzz! Then we laid our swags out in a circle and began playing the story game where one person tells a story and everyone else has to ask yes/no question to figure out why something in the story happened. It was good times and Ruben made his noise some more.
Day Three we got up at 5am to make it to the sunrise over the rock. Or guess it was in front of the rock so that as the sun gets higher in the sky the rock goes from a darker aubergine to a rich red color. We had breaky in the dark; someone contaminated the hot water with coffee within 5 minutes, and then watched the sun rise. I alternated between watching the rock change color and the actual sun rise. I think it was my 10th sunrise of 2009. Once the sun was properly up, we got back in the bus and were taken to the rock to do the Base Walk, another 2+ hour walk. But this time it was entirely flat and since it was early it was quite cool and there was a nice wind keeping the flies at bay. The walk was great and I could’ve taken much longer to just slowly walk around staring up at Uluru but about halfway around I had to go pee and the urge to go only got worse. By the end I was walking pretty slowly just because I had to really concentrate to hold it in and not pee all over myself! Luckily there were toilets at the car park (I’d been looking for a bush bathroom, but there was mostly only grass and skinny trees nearby).
Next stop was petrol fill up and collection of the German surfers’ boards, who were being let off at the Uluru airport. On the way we pulled over to the side of the road for a group pic. After the airport drop off we had a close to 5 hour drive back to Alice Springs. We stopped at a rest area with a great view of Mt Connor (the giant toothbrush) on one side and over a burnt orange sand dune an old salt lake on the other side. Both very cool. I was wearing a burnt orange Texas shirt that day and totally blended in. We stopped for lunch a few hours later and then at a camel farm. You could ride the camels (racing camels) around the paddock for $5, they walked and then ran, but there were also birds, a dingo, kangaroos, and llamas to check out. I was happy to finally see the dingo, he looked just like a dog, all chained up though. I feed a couple camels some hay too.
An hour later we were back in Alice and the first thing we did back at the hostel was jump in the pool and then shower. That night we all got back together for a group dinner/drink up at a local restaurant and then headed for a night on the town in Alice Springs. The bar was called Bojangles and it was heavily stylized after an old outback saloon. Pretty cool.
The next morning Kate left early for her flight to Perth and I had all day to relax in Alice before taking The Ghan train to Darwin. It is called ‘The Ghan” because before the railway was complete Afghans would transfer passengers on camel back from the end of the line to Alice Springs. I wandered about Alice CBD for a while and basically just chilled at the hostel before taking a shuttle to the train station. On the train I sat beside a smelly Briton and across the aisle I listened to an annoying American brag about where he had been to an unassuming Dutch guy. I got tired to listening to him pretty quick. The train ride went by pretty quickly to the first stop- Katherine- the next morning at 9am. The Outback had really changed since I went to sleep the night before. It went from semi-arid region (mostly sand on the ground with yellow grass, short shrubbery, clusters of trees around riverbeds) to more tropical looking (lots of green grass and lots of green trees and shrubs everywhere). I guess that makes sense since Katherine is considered to be in “the Top End,” and we had crossed the Tropic of Capricorn some time during the night.

Right now I’m posting this from Darwin and the next stop on my adventure is Bali, Indonesia. I’ve been itching to go to Southeast Asia for a while now and I am now making that dream a reality. I leave tomorrow evening, April 1, and am there for 3 weeks, flying back to Darwin April 21. Then who knows! So if there is no word from me in the next 3 weeks I’m either having too much fun to bother with the internet (leaving the laptop and a most of my clothing in Darwin) or you might need to contact the Canadian consulate… Just kidding!

PS I was going to post like a dozen awesome Outback pics, but blogger is taking forever! UGH!