view from the middle

Hey guys,

We finally reached the middle of Australia only to be met with hot, dry weather and approximately 1 billion flies. It feels so good to be travelling again.
Alice Springs has a population of about 23,000 people but I think most of them spend their time inside because it's so hot. It's the driest place in Australia in terms of lakes and rivers etc. (as there are none), but is actually the only place in the country with no water restrictions. The rivers in Alice Springs have all dried up but about a metre underneath there teems water! So you see gum trees growing in dried up river beds even though it looks like a desert. The Todd river is the main river in Alice Springs and probably the only place in the world that has an annual boat race that DOESN'T run if there is water in the river. The boat race is just an excuse to get together and have a few drinks while watching people running down the river with their makeshift boats.
There is a wide divide between the white people and the Aboriginals of Alice Springs in terms of social and economic means and you can see the results through the way people talk about the Aboriginals, and the amount of alcohol-related litter. We were told not to go out at night by ourselves because the Aboriginals aren't always very friendly. I think there are a lot of structural issues in this community and that the Aboriginals are very misunderstood.

Anyway,

We started our 3-day tour of Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) and Kings Canyon with a lengthy 6 hours on the bus. Our first stop was at the Stuart Hall Camel Station where for $5 you can ride a camel! It was also a place to grab a hot cup of tea on the surprisingly brisk morning. We then headed out to see Kata-Tjuta. We passed a mountain named after Conor -- Mt. Conner! It's also called Fooluru because it's often mistaken for Uluru because it's the first big rock for miles. It was formed by a glacier pushing rock for years and then melting, of course, leaving Mt. Conner near Curtain Springs. Across the road and over some red sand dunes you can see Lake Amadaeus -- a dried up salt lake. It's just vast whiteness - like God got sick of red so just used white-out for a bit. After seeing endless amounts of red dirt, dead kangaroos, and the remains of other outback animals we finally arrived and walked amongst the many domes of Kata Tjuta. These rock formations are made from a type of conglomeration of rocks and mud - apply named Conglomerate. They seem to rise out of nowhere as for miles around them it is only flat outback. From far away the Olgas look like a cluster of big red beehives but upclose I couldn't even fathom how vast and random these outcroppings were. They were formed around the same time as Uluru from what they call the Alice Springs Orogeny -- when the sea that used to cover them receded and the rock folded and fractured and so flipped the rocks -- Uluru turned 90 degrees and Kata Tjuta was flipped about 15 degrees (this is even evident on the lines that appear on the rock -- Uluru has lines that run vertically). This also means that the rocks are just the tips of huge rock slabs that scientists say extend 6km below the surface. How cool is that?? The Aboriginals have stories of how they appeared as well but you have to stretch your mind a little more to believe them. After walking 4.5km around the domes we boarded the bus to watch the sunset at Ayers Rock.

I thought that when I finally saw Ayers Rock in person that I would have some sort of emotional response but I didn't at all -- instead I still feel like I wasn't really there. The sunset was awesome.

We slept in swag for the two nights (like a bivi sac) and sleeping in this big thick bag with padding was surprisingly warm. It was nice to be out in the night air, watching the stars that you often miss in a place like Toronto, here they were clear yet the Southern Hemisphere constellations were unfamiliar.

We woke up to a very chilly 5:30am to see sunrise at Uluru -- which when still a bit dark was much more impressive than sunset. The place was packed with other tours and tourists making the experience feel less special and made getting shots harder to make without people in them. I needed to share the experience but didn't really want to...haha. We rushed back to the bus to get warm, only to be told that we'd be walking the base of this giant rock in this seemingly extreme cold (it's supposed to be hot in the outback right?). It was a great walk though --

I thought that Uluru was just rock straight up from the earth but it has caves, rubble, erosion and vegetation at it's base. Uluru is made out of a different rock than Kata Tjuta -- it's a type of arkose sandstone and with the release of iron comes its oxidation which is why it turns red. You could see in some caves, where rock wasn't subject to oxidation, the rock is grey. It was great to walk around the base and see all of its caverns, eroded holes and know that the Aborginals have a story for every single part of it. This is such a sacred spot for them. But after 10km we were just about over this giant rock and we boarded the bus yet again but this time headed for Kings Canyon.

We woke up the next morning to howling Dingoes. We had seen some the previous day hanging around the Kings Canyon Resort where we had lunch and they looked skinny and less menacing than I had expected. We drove to Kings Canyon and started the 'Rim Walk' at around 7am. The first ascent is commonly called 'heart-attack hill' because it's a bit of a steep ascent. It was a bit tiring but I just kept thinking about how much worse it would have been for the people who made the stone steps all the way up! It was stunning to see the Canyon with the sun rising. Brett (our guide) complimented the tour with his bush tucker knowledge and of course history of the canyon -- which unlike the Grand Canyon (a gorge) is actually a canyon becuase it was formed by a collapse of earth instead of only carved out by water. The canyon rock used to be sandunes which gives them their beehive look. After many years the sand solidified into three layers 1.] sandstone, 2.] purple shale, and 3.] and impermeable sandstone. Because the shale is permeable, water seeps in but doesn't get out because of the impermeable sandstone so this is why you see trees that seem to grow from nowhere, as well as the prehistoric plants that survive here only because water flowed here millions of years ago. Some rock even had ripples in it revealing a prehistoric lake at the highest part of the canyon.

We walked along the rim and down into the canyon to a lush area they call the 'Garden of Eden.' After the 6km walk we made it back to the bus to get solice from the hundreds of flies that liked to land on your face making you feel like a child from a worldvision commercial.

On the road back to Alice Springs we saw more Wedge-tailed Eagles [Australia's largest bird of prey, and they're huge (0.7m away from having the wingspan of the Albatross)], wild camels, and wild horses running across the road in front of us.
Going into the tour without any expectations to fail it turned out that 2 Polish, 2 Danish, 2 French, 2 Japanese, 2 Canadians and 1 Australian guide ended up being a fantastic tour of the red centre.

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