Uluru and the Desert Patrol

After 10 Days in Adelaide with very gracious hosts, I decided it was time to move on. It was a good personal decision, but perhaps not the wisest one in terms of my finances, which are okay at the moment, but have to see me through New Zealand, which may or may not happen - don't worry it'll happen. I'm good at living on next to nothing. I did it for the last five years after all.

I booked a tour with a company called Groovy Grape because they were offering a great package that would get me not only up to Alice Springs, Uluru, etc., but back as well, and they were going to throw in food as well! It was set and so was I for the 6:45 pick-up. Poor Kat had to get up to drive me there, thankfully - it'd be a long walk even with my little backpack.

I got on, and was immediately bombarded by the most uproarious laughter coming from the back of the bus, which fortunately was not directed at me. It would turn out to be Phil and Anika, our two underage German exchange students who came to be known to the group as "the kiddies." They were fun to have along and Anika had such a wonderfully explosive laugh that it was hard not to join in when she got something funny into her head. Also aboard were an English couple, James and Kerry, and retired lady from the Channel Islands, Carol, and Three German girls, Veronika, Julia, and Anna. Our tour guide, Kev was the kind of tour guide who can just step out of a van and you think "Yep, this is going to be a good tour." His hair was long and unkempt, the buttons on his shirt partially undone, his "Oh, you were waiting for ME?" attitude to the tour....yep, this was going to be good ... and a growth experience for all those of the German Persuasion - ie. orderly and efficient.

We stopped first at the sight of a giant coal pit on the way up to the Flinder's Ranges. It was impressive in scope and scale. Sad as much as it was impressive. We then spent the night in a place called Angorchina (pr. Ang-or-chee-na, as opposed to Anger China) You wouldn't want to see China mad! We got there not long before sunset after a long day on the road. It was a beautiful stop and we were enticed by a pre-sunset walk, only, where was Kev? We waited for quite some time, then went looking for him. His one drink had turned into a couple and a few smokes. I said, "So, are we going for that walk?" He looked up at me, plastic chair leaning back, "Yeah, I've been waiting for you. You weren't waiting for me were you?" So we were going to have a very short walk: "Just follow the path," we did, only after we walked for 5 minutes, the path suddenly went in 3 different directions. It was a complicated discussion, but eventually we came to a decision that turned out to be the right one. It led not only to the right path, but we did see some Kangaroos. That was pretty sweet.

The following day, we started off early and interesting. After breakfast, and some advice from Kerry that mirrored that of my sister-outlaw, Carrie, about my acid reflux (what is it with Carries and good living?), we were sent off by Kev, down the road while he fueled up. First, those in the lead began walking up a road entirely different than the one he wanted us to go down. Fortunately for us, we resolved this pretty quickly. The second problem, we realized after some time, was that we'd been walking for an awfully long time and it was starting to get rather hot out, and no one had grabbed water - after all Kev was just fueling up. So we sat in the shad of some big gum trees in the bed of an old dried up river while we pondered whether he WAS actually coming. I took the opportunity to sketch in my notebook, while a few people chatted and still a couple more complained. The Australians have a great word for whining: "Whinging" (pr. Winge-ing) I like it.

Carol eventually flagged down a care, clearly more concerned about the situation than the rest of us. She implored them to go castigate him and to tell him to get his ass over here to pick us up. They mouths said sure, but their eyes said "whatever crazy lady." He eventually did come pick us up when the attendant suggested we might be quite aways down the road by now. See the misunderstanding was obvious, we didn't realize that the refueling also included caffine and nicotine. Silly backpackers.

We saw lots of other weird things that day. The Old Ghan railway - which wasn't actually weird excepting that it's purported to named after a joke made about an old Afghani man who was praying while the train had stopped. We then drove past Lake Eyre, part of a large networks of waterless salt lakes that the rest of the world would call a basin, a flat, a wasteland, a wow-that's-a-lot-of-salt-area, but not a lake. As far as I'm aware, lakes have a tendency to enclose liquid of some variety. After taking in the not-a-lake, we drove to a large ghost town called Farina, settled by those seeking their fortunes in the wheat industry. The problem is that wheat doesn't grown in Farina, in fact, nowhere did we stop was there was less vegetation than in Farina (excepting perhaps in the "lakes.") I would have tried to sell the residents some snake oil, but there were none. If you looked up gullible in the dictionary you might see a picture of the former town of Farina. The mound springs popping up in the desert placated my disappointment with a waterless stop, and so did a couple of dips in desert spas.

Perhaps the most interesting stop of the day was at a small private property owned by a man named Alf, dubbed Talc Alf, because of his soapstone art. Quite a skilled artist though he is, and famous for his replacement of the Union Jack in the Australian flag with the Aboriginal flag, he has some interesting, and outrageous theories on the symbolic meanings of the letters of our alphabet. At first I was curious, then I was interested, then I realized the depth of the interesting had turned into a morass of "I totally just made this stuff up to fit our alphabet." I listened, so he glommed onto me like a loved starved kitten. I found him really interesting to listen too and would recommend the stop to everyone. At least he doesn't lack in conviction or style!

After giving up on trying to fix the which had blown on the way up - the jack having collapsed in the sand - and having a beer at the famous pub in Williams Creek, the smallest town in Australia (6 people - up until recently two of the couples weren't on talking terms...ouch), we settled into our swags for the night. Swags are perhaps the greatest camping invention ever - it's basically a canvas bag with a foam mattress. They're more-or-less rainproof (short of a downfall) and they're really comfy and warm. They made for very good sleeping. The flies, however, made for the opposite, although they do make an excellent alarm clock, as long as you want to be up at dawn. They're in your mouth and eyes and nose and ears. You actually get used to quite a lot of what would otherwise be an abominable annoyance.

From there, and with our "tyre" finally fixed, we made our way to Coober Pedy, which would be the same location and activity on the way back. It's a cool dugout town, an excellent example of using the earth to cool your homes. Coober Pedy is essentially an opal mining town. However, people do not mine - that's not allowed. They do expand their homes though if they suspect there may be opals - this is allowed. Some people have enormous homes, and they're really cheap, if you don't mind living a 13 hour drive back to civilization, eschew daylight in your home, and love 45 degree heat outside. People "Never find Opals" and have "Very Small Incomes" in this place, or so the government is concerned and aware. It's a don't ask, because it's none of your damn business, rule out there. But opal does magically appear from somewhere.

They have a cool, literally, hotel with the only bar in town that's held at a geo-controled temperature of between 20-24 degrees all year around (even with the door open). We played pool, and I actually didn't suck. On the way back I sucked, but Julia kept me in the game, which seems to be a bit of a theme with my pool playing these days. But we had to leave early after we one, as it turned out the little chat that someone had to have with us was secret code for, you need to come smoke some marijuana with me. This may or may not have happened, but I was glad to have some leftover pizza around following this even which may or may not have happened. The one sad thing that happened on the way up, was that the very fine dust and unexpected wind led to the untimely death of my, or more properly, my uncle Geoff's camera. It was only the kindness of my travel companions, and Anna in particular that I have pictures of Uluru.

On the next day we finally made it to the Uluru / Kata Tjuta National park, and stayed at Yulara, the purely tourist town made for people to see Uluru and the Olgas. We watched a sunset, then headed back to our campsite for dinner. The next two days we spent time exploring the park, and if you want my opinion, which you have no choice to hear at this point, given that you've invested this much time into the blog already, is that Kata Tjuta is much more interesting to walk around, even if Uluru is much more impressive. Where Uluru has the edge is it is one single rock that managed to escape the mountain ranges, and then tip over and sink to a distance of 6 km. Yes, what you see is only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. We, being the culturally enlightened people we were, chose not to trod up the sacred path that the Aborigines request you avoid, and instead walked around it's girthy bulk. It is much more beautiful than in pictures.

The guide books tell you there's no preparing for Uluru, that it can't be over-hyped, and what I find is that is true. What is most surprising to me is just how lush and green everything around the rock is. I had to stop and think "wait a minute, what about all those pictures I see?" They're all a big load of photoshopped badness. Stop altering your photos people. I think walking around Uluru gave a much better understanding of the scope of the rock and its unique geology, and a couple of ours of heart attack-free exercise in what would soon become sweltering heat.

On our last "Outback Day" was King's Canyon. It was a hike around, duh, a canyon. But a very beautiful and terrifying one. It was a chance for me to once again face my terror of heights, or falling off of them at any rate. I had the opportunity to Fart in its general direction. I managed two feats of massive courage, for me, they seem to others, I'm sure, rather mundane acts of "Oooooh, that's a cool view." But they were a stretch for me, and even sitting here safely in the Melbourne public library, thinking about them makes my palms sweat uncomfortably. I couldn't actually bring myself to look directly down the cliff face, but I got reasonably close, so I hope you can forgive my cowardice, but I am proud of myself nevertheless. That's my motto - "stick it to fear" Okay, so I've never said those words before, but I like it. It should be written on my little monkey shirt.

Alice Springs was mostly uneventful, albeit a late night. I mostly spent it taking care of some things and finding out that fixing my camera was basically a lost cause...doh. It's covered by insurance, but it's a royal pain in the ass to deal with insurance. Thank goodness I got it though. I've had things stolen, fallen down stairs, now a broken camera. I hope that's the end of it. I did go see a couple of movies though, mostly because it was air conditioned. It was so cold in fact, that I felt I was in Antarctica watching Happy Feet which was excellent, and later went with the girls to watch The Holiday, which is maybe the best Rom-Com I've seen since Love Actually. This is my guilty pleasure, my little dirty secret. I love Romantic Comedies. There I've said it. "Stick it to Fear." What's not to like: laughter and love - that's the best bits of life right there.

The way back was really quite uneventful, given that we had to cover 1600 km in two days. That left me in Adelaide, with a ticket to ride. Julia and Veronika decided to let me catch a ride back to Melbourne with them. They'd provide the lift, and I was their monkey for 3 days.

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