Advertisement
The journey here continues through Australia from Adelaide to Alice Springs on The Ghan. The Ghan is a cross country train that travels straight up through the center of the continent. It only makes a few select stops, mostly because there isn't much between Adelaide and Darwin. It takes two days to get to Alice Springs on the train and then another two days to get to Darwin from Alice Springs. Alice Springs itself is a tiny town completely isolated from everywhere. It started out as a telegraph station and now it is the closest town to the world heritage site of Uluru and Kata Tjuta National park.
To start I spent three days in the desert where of course it rained on me. I feel it sais something about my travel luck lately that even when I go to the desert it rains. Uluru (also known as Ayers Rock) is quite magnificient in a "I will never see anything this big ever again" kind of way. Both the Rock and the nearby Kata-Tjuta were formed 500 million years ago by something called an alluvial Fan. Kata Tjuta (meaning "many heads") is made of 36 rock domes, and Uluru reaches
deep underground like an ice burg.
Ownership and managment of Uluru has changed hands a few times. Basically the aboriginal tribe was minding their own business until 1872 when a couple of Europeans stumbled upon Uluru, renamed it Ayers Rock after one of their fellow Europeans and claimed it for themselves. In 1920 part of the modern park area was given back to the Aboriginal community as part of Petermann Reserve. Then when tourists started coming to see it and there was potential to make money the Australian government reclaimed the park for itself in 1958. Finally in 1985 the Aboriginal community was granted ownership of the land and they in turn leased it back the Australian National parks and Wildlife Service for 99 years. Part of that lease was the requirement that the controversial rock climb be kept open for tourists. My tour guide was very adamant that climbing the rock is "stupid" and "disrespectful." There was one guy in our group who wanted to do the climb but didn't tell our guide he was doing it because he didn't want to listen to the censure. Naturally our guide noticed he was doing the climb and lectured him
about it anyway. The local aboriginal people consider Uluru a sacred site and at least 40 people have died trying to climb Uluru. It is a pretty steep climb up a rock face where the only safety you have is clinging to a chain fence bolted to the rock. Despite the constant warnings and disaproval of the locals so many people have attempted the climb over the years that the path around the fence has discolored the rock itself. I personally didn't do the climb but that was because I am lazy.
We also, hiked through King's Canyon, which I felt was just as spectacular as Uluru. Then we arrived back in Alice Springs and I stayed there for a total of four days despite the lack of things to do, because I had to wait for the train to come back through. I did a walk down the banks of the (very dry) Todd River to the Telegraph Station. I didn't go in to the museum because they were charging $9 which I felt was ridiculous.
After Alice Springs I moved on to Darwin.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.055s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 9; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0347s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb