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Published: February 22nd 2007
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Abboriginal paintings at Uluru
Spanky teaching us at the Olgas Ahh finally! If you ever want to feel youre in Australia then Alice springs and Uluru is the place to come. This place is a truely beautiful and spiritual place where you can almost feel the Aboriginal spirits that you are told about when you visit this place.
I stayed in a lovely little backpager lodge called Annies Place. They ran their own 3 day trip to Uluru so after an early night(the first in ages) i was up around 5.30am (and missing the Barca liverpool game which was driving me mad till i found out the score a few hours later :o) ) to head off to the Kings Canyon with "Spanky" as our tour guide.
Now a few things about central australia. 1 is the heat. As soon as you get off the plane it just hits you like opening an over door. When i say its hot im talking 46c in the fecking shade!!! 2. The flies......these things are the spawn of the devil himself!! The dive bomb your eyes nose ears and mouth consistantly all day long and its HORRIBLE!!! The first thing you do when you arrive is get yourself a fly net for
your face or you WILL kill someone for theirs!
Anyway on the way to Kings Canyon i wrecked Spankys head so much about trying to find out the liverpool score that we stopped at a petrol station where they had internet and when i found out we had just beaten barca at the nou camp, well, the next few days were going to be great!We arrived at kings canyon and prepared for the walk. We were all told to bring 2 1.5 litre bottles of water for the walk our fly nets and suncream. They were all very useful things to bring i can tel you that! Spanky told us about how the canyons were formed and we all trudged along in the heat. Some were clearly suffering more than others and to be honest i was fine.....well as fine as one can be in 46c heat. After about an hour we arrived at a deep and cool water pool. You didnt have to tell any of us what to do next as we were already stripping before we even go to the pool. It was so refreshing and it took a while for spanky to get us out
of the pool to continue our trek. After a few more hours and seeing some beautiful scenery and a 2000 year old tree we arrived back at the bus. I had drank half of one of the bottles of water while almost everyone else had finished the 2 bottles. This was something strange I soon found out over the 3 days in the outback. I was drinking less than half of what everone else was each day. I just didnt sweat as much as anyone else or was as thirsty. No one could believe i didnt finish the 2 bottle of water until the last day out there. I suppose its coz i wasnt carrying as much excess water (shall we say) in my body as everyone else so i didnt need to replace it as much. So if you need a job done in the dessert im your man but it will cost ya!!!!
That night i helped spanky with the cooking and the group got to know eachother. Everyone got on really well with eachother and it made the trip even better. We all slept out in the open under that stars which were so bright. The ground
was very hot so that kept you warm throughout the night, not that it was cold anyway. Some people didnt sleep because of the creepy crawleys the would walk across you at times but i didnt let it bother me and just pushed them off me if i felt anything.
Next morning we headed for the Olgas. It was extremely hot, even hotter than the previous day and a few people turned back to the bus after 30 minutes. We did a 7 or 8 km track around the Olgas and learned alot of the Abboriginies on the trek from spanky. It was a very tough trekk and as we approached the end of it there was a sign saying that the track was closed due to extreme temperatures which was put up while we had already gone down the track....doh! One of the girls got very sick when we got back to the bus due to heat stress and needed a half hour to cool down before we could move on.
So after a lovely swim at a resorts swimming pool we finally head to Uluru(ayers rock to those who still havent guessed what uluru is) Now
i know its just a rock but when you get there its so much more. Its not only its size thats impressive but the colours of it and the local stories and spirits you learn of when you visit it. Its truely and magical place. We watched the sun set and had a few beers. It was quite a moving and exciting experience and some of us (eh Stephane from france who we called partyboy coz he looked like partyboy in Jackass) got a bit carried away after a few beers on the bus to the camp and did a "full monty" for the girls.....his wife didnt seem to mind much so everyone had a laugh.
That night the beers flowed and we all had great craic around the fire. The next morning we were up very early for sunrise and some amazing scenery at Uluru. We walked around the base of it which was 10km and the flies were absolute bast*rds!!!! We were asked to respect the Abboriginal culture and not climb the sacred rock which were were only too happy to oblige with but what i couldnt believe was the amount of people who did climb it
and they were 95% Japanese. We heard later that apparently it has something to do with your status in Japan if you climb it. Now coming from people and a country where respect is everything i found that their lack of respect here was very strange indeed.
When we got back to Alice Springs we were all fithy smell and sweaty but we all had a great time. We headed out that night for lots of beers and i got talking to some Abboriginals. They were very nice people if you actaully stop to talk to them but most people are afraid to speak to them and have a bad impression that they are all dangerous drunks which is sad really. They were very nice people.
We all had a great time and spanky was a great guide who got everyone mixing and chating to eachother. This place is a MUST visit when you come to Australia.
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