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Published: August 6th 2007
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Dicky, me, Leanne, Big Dave, Oli and Will all set for our groovy adventure with our fly nets!Well, where do I start?!
After a quiet night in Alice Springs (which is pretty much a dump of a town, wouldn't advise anyone to stay there for longer than was absolutely necessary!) me and the guys (i.e. Dicky, Will, Big Dave, Oli and Leanne) were up bright and early to go in search of fly nets for the next part of our adventure - our trip through the Northern Territory down to Adelaide. This was the week I was going to get to see Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Kings Canyon, I could hardly believe it!
Our trip of a lifetime started at 12pm when the Groovy Grape bus arrived to pick us up and we jumped on to meet the other 15 people we were going to be with for the next few days. Everyone was in high spirits and we quickly began singing songs and generally being really cheesy on the way to our first stop of the tour, a camel farm. It turns out that our guide Micah races camels (bizzarre I know!) so he was dubbed the camel whisperer from then on in! Leanne, Dicky and I had a quick ride on a camel which
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Leanne and I get our first ride on a camel - pretty terrifying when it picks up speed to tell the truth, don't know how Micah does it! was definately different, especially when it started to run! Apparently there's more camels in Oz than in any other country in the world and if they keep breeding at the rate they are, there will be more camels than people here! So camel racing is a big sport here, though I don't know if the rest of you will be able to catch the Camel Cup on sky sports in July!
After this we got back on the bus and headed to where we were staying for the night - a campsite near Kings Canyon. We had a quick stop on the way where Micah told us all to get out of the bus and go and collect firewood. Unluckily for us the wood was still attached to its roots and in the ground so it took a little more effort than you'd think! And the process wasn't made any more fun after Micah told us that it was completely illegal and that we were to run like hell if anyone went passed and that if we got a splinter from the "poisonous" wood we had to get it out immediately or we would become pretty ill within five
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Erm..."acquiring" some wood for the fire! hours. It was pretty soon after this that we figured out that he is a complete wind up merchant and should never be believed!
We arrived at the campsite in darkness, Micah's timing not being great! But we quickly got a fire going and were soon munching our dinners quite happily and getting to know everyone. Our group consisted of quite a mixture of nationalities which was great - we had English, German, Israeli, Ecuadorian, Korean, American and French, with me plugging in for team Scotland. Oh, and Micah was an Aussie, a quarter Aboriginal no-less. His grandmother had been one of the "stolen generation" of Aborigines where the white government took away any half-caste children from their Aboriginal families and put them in camps where they were not allowed to speak their own language or practice any of their culture in an attempt to breed out the Aboriginal people (anyone seen the Rabbit Proof Fence?). It was really fascinating listening to him at times (when he wasn't on the wind up!), he was so informative when it came to the Aboriginal history and culture.
When we were told we'd have to get up at 5am the next
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Kings Canyon. My pics don't do it any justice, don't know how though since I took about a million of them! day so we could make it to Kings Canyon in time for sunrise we were all pretty keen to get to our beds early so put the goon to one side and started preparing our swags. Can't believe I slept in a swag! This is the traditional bedroll that Aussie's would use to kip in when they were travelling from town to town in search of work (hence the name swagman which you might have heard of). It's baisically a big waterproof bag with a thin mattress inside which you then get in with your sleeping bag and zip yourself up. It's also got a handy "monster flap" at the top which Micah assured us would ward off any unwanted bed companions, although I wasn't convinced! Some of the guys hadn't brought sleeping bags with them and there had been a mix-up with the stuff Micah brought so they had to go it alone in the swags and Micah didn't even get that, he had to sleep on the bus! Don't think this would've been too bad in the summer but it was minus one that night so the lot of them absolutely froze. Even I did and I had
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Kings Canyon again a sleeping bag - I've never been so grateful for a hot shower as I was the next morning! It was pretty amazing sleeping out under the stars though, the Milky Way was so clear. And I'm now an expert at spotting the Southern Cross, getting to be a proper little Aussie!
So at stupid o'clock the next morning we were up and off to Kings Canyon to watch the sunrise. Before we got to appreciate the view though we had to tackle "Heartattack Hill" which certainly warmed us up! I'm not entirely sure how to describe Kings Canyon, it was utterly breathtaking. It's sandstone was laid 440 millions years ago at about the same time the first life on land appeared and it has this feeling of vastness (sorry if that's not a word!) that I've never really experienced before. Micah took us around and showed us how the Aboriginal people would use the plants and other natural resources to make weapons, medicines and even invisible ink! It was just amazing. At one point he told us we were going to see a very rare species of Aussie animal - the pigmy koala. Dicky and I were wise
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Pygmy koalas - so cute! to him by this point and wouldn't take him on at all but lo and behold when we turned the corner there they were hiding in a tree. The fact that they were tiny little toys that Micah had planted there took a while to dawn on some of the group so it was very amusing to watch!
Once we'd completed our four hour hike round the canyon we headed back to the camp where we got some lunch and chilled out for a couple of hours. We were then back on the bus to head towards the campsite at Ayers Rock. Along the way we saw eagles that had a 2 metres long wingspan and had to dodge quite a few kangaroos which seem to have the road awareness of rabbits! We also stopped at one point while Micah tried to catch some wild camels but to no avail (not sure what he would have done with them even if he had caught them!). After another firewood collection stop (where I managed to take a gouge out my arm - only five hours to live!) - we arrived at the campsite just in time to run up to
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Uluru at sunrise a viewpoint and catch our first views of a sunset at Uluru and the Olgas- amazing.
It was another fun night around the campfire and Dicky got to fulfil a dream and ran through the other campsites with his version of the olympic torch but none of them were up for the craic so we stuck to ourselves. Anthony, an adorable, if slightly insane, Geordie, spoiled us all and cooked up a feast on the barbie which we gladly devoured. It was another freezing night in the swags (the novelty had well worn off by this point!) but luckily Micah had managed to find enough swags and sleeping bags for everyone to get a decent night's sleep.
We were up ridiculously early again and off to experience our first sunrise over Uluru. I'm running out of adjectives but it was, once again, breathtaking. It's huge! Uluru is an inselberg, literally "island mountain", an isolated remnant left after the slow erosion of an original mountain range. The beginning of human settlement in the Uluru region has not been determined, but it is estimated to be more than 10,000 years ago. The first European to discover it was William Gosse
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The money shot... and he named it Ayers Rock, while the name Uluru is from the local Pitjantjatjara people and is a family name. The rock literally seems to change colour with the varying light which is just stunning to witness.
We spent some time in the cultural centre there where Micah showed us some of the Aboriginal weapons and told us how, when in training to become warriers, the Aboriginal men are given a mentor. It is the mentor's responsibility to ensure that his student learns everything properly and if the student mucks up at any point it is the mentor that gets the punishment - a spear through the leg. You wouldn't want a slow pupil in your group anyway! Apparently the practice still goes on today but that's according to Micah so I have absolutely no idea if it's true or not!
We were then faced with the dilema of whether to climb Uluru or not. You are allowed to do it, although there are plans to close the climb down in the next five years. The Aboriginal people ask you not to because the rock is of such cultural and spiritual importance to them but a lot
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A different view of Uluru - see it's not just a big rectangle! of people are still keen to do it. After viewing the climb which looked pretty dangerous and mega difficult, Micah explained that the only safety is a 60 year old chain link fence that goes half way up the rock and from there on in you're on your own. By this point I'd pretty much decided not to do it but was still relieved when we found out that the climb was closed due to high winds at the summit. Instead we walked around the base of the rock, which was a 10km walk! Although I hadn't thought too much about it, I had kind of expected that it would be a pretty straight forward walk in a rectangle (ignorant I know!). But Uluru weaves in and out in a way that's not conveyed in the pictures you see of it. It was great to walk around and see it all. There were some parts that you weren't allowed to photograph because they were sacred to the Anangu (Aboriginal people) and there are some Aboriginal scetches on other parts of it which were so interesting to see (although we all had a giggle when we learned that the Aboriginal word
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The groovy gang at the Uluru sunset trying to make Monica feel a little better about her dare! for yellow is Wanka Wanka!).
Following this we headed back to the campsite for lunch and then set out to walk through Kata Tjuta, also known as The Olgas. From a distance the 36 domes look like a bunch of piles sticking out of the ground! The Pitjantjajara name Kata Tjuta means 'many heads'. The site is as sacred to the Anangu as Uluru and where in Uluru it has signs asking not to take pictures of parts because they are of spiritual significance to the Aboriginal women, at Kata Tjuta the signs say it is of spiritual significance to Aboriginal men. Once again the walk was spectacular - talk about overloading your system!
Following this we made it back to Micah's secret spot to watch the sunset over Uluru. Or not so secret as we discovered when we turned up and roughly 500 other people had also found it! At some point in the journey we had made up a game that involved each of us having a number that was then written round the wheel of the bus with an arrow above the wheel. Whatever number the arrow was pointing at when we stopped meant that
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Kata Tjuta - The Olgas that person had to do a dare. So it was very amusing to watch Big Dave have to sing "God Save the Queen" infront of all the people at the sunset, while DJ from America had to squawk like a chicken whenever anyone said "chicken", Monica from Germany had to ruin three people's photos by walking infront of them picking her nose, Leanne had to hi-five 15 people, Jim from the US had to say "in my pants" after every sentence (hysterical with his accent!), Emma had to sing every sentence and I had to kiss someone new on the cheek every half hour. I know, I know, a bit juvenile but an excellent laugh, especially when I had to kiss a member of the Aboriginal Police on the cheek in the petrol station because there was no one else around!
Our last night in the Ayers Rock campground was taken up by the ingenious "Swag Olympics" which the boys came up with. The main (and only) event was to see how far you could throw a swag. Scotland didn't even make the qualifying rounds (nothing new there then!) so I was the judge, helped by Anthony and Will.
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Ant takes his turn at the swag olympics We all had an excellent laugh and the final result was that England won 1st and 3rd places (will never hear the end of it!) and USA took the silver. Quality entertainment!
And that was that, our last night in the Northern Territories. The following day we headed off into South Australia but I reckon that deserves a blog all of it's own so turn the page...
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jody d
non-member comment
oi oi!
Hey Linz! Couldnt add comment on your most recent blogs for some reason so a bit behind here! Anyway, just wanted to say im glad ure still lovin it out there doll, it really looks like youre making the most of your time away! Some of your pics are fantastic too, they really do make me jealous! Surely it wont be long now til your adventure is over though...? Anyhoo, gots ta go, lessons to plan and all that jazz...boooo! Take care luv, catch up wi u again soon Jods (Donald!) xxxx