Advertisement
Published: June 22nd 2006
Dinky the Singing Dingo!
With Frank the Dutch Guy accompanying on the piano!Greetings from Alice Springs!
No springs at all here though. Tis very dry and dusty. Apparently theres an underground river or something but i cant see any sign of it...all looks like bush and desert to me!
Alice itself is a small town - not much here apart from people heading to Ayers Rock and back. Its got some good views of the surrounding McDonnell ranges and a cool Desert Park though, where you tramp about the bush with headphones on and some Aboriginal guy tells you all about the flora and fauna in various parts of the desert and how they used to survive out in the bush and what different plants were used for. All very educational...but i still dont think id remember enough of it to survive in the desert! Also interesting to learn that the Aboriginals do eat Wichety Grubs, but not raw in an 'Im a Celebrity' stylee...they cook them - and apparently they're much nicer like that. Suprise suprise!
Alice has quite a large Aboriginal population and theyre very visible as you wonder about the town, as is all the problems that they seem to have. There are many unemployed and homeless
Kings Canyon
Pretty cool views! aboriginals and there also seems to be a huge drink problem among them, especially in the older people, and they can be quite scary, sitting drunk in the street and shouting a lot! But i guess they just dont know how to fit in to the society of modern Australia, after being excluded from it for so long.
And so from Alice we embarked upon a 4 day tour that took us into the Desert and the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National park. First we called in on the Aussie cultural icon (yes he's even a question in Trivial Pursuit) that is Dinky the Singing Dingo! As soon as anyone starts playing the piano, he jumps up and howls! Except its such loud and high pitched howling, it kinda sounds like painful singing! Hilarious😊
Then we explored the pretty impressive Kings Canyon, and then moved on to watch sunset over the famous rock itself. The next day we tramped around the Olgas - or Kata Tjuta as they are officially called now, from the aboriginal meaning 'many heads'. The Olgas are several large lumps of rock, similar to Uluru, except that they are all seperate butina giant cluster. It was absolutley
freezing getting up at 5.30 to watch sunrise over them and beginning our hike around them, but it did eventually warm up a bit after doing a 10 km hike! They were pretty impressive rocks and a little overlooked as they are right next to Uluru, but worth the hike!
We spent the whole of the next day at Uluru itself, getting a bit of cultural education at the visitors centre, and then doing the 9km basewalk all they way around the rock itself. Hard work, especially cos we had got up at 5.30 again to watch sunrise, but really interesting. Up close it looks completley different from the pictures and postcards, all the smooth rounded bits are actually full of cracks and caves and you can see aboriginal cave pictures and lots of sacred sites, used in their traditional rituals.
The trip was great fun, despite the freezing cold nights spent under the stars sleeping in swags in temperatures of about 1 degrees, and despite the ridiculous early mornings! The Dutch and the Polishspent the whole time winding the Germans up and all in all it was a good laugh!
Back in Alice, we had just
Us!
Oh, and the rock. enough time to cuddle a joey at the kangaroo rescue centre, where they rescue baby joeys out of the pouches of female kangaroos killed onthe road. They were soo cute and fluffy, and happy just to sit in their blankets and be cuddled, like they would in their mothers pouches.
So next up, we're back to Sydney for a few days to do our last minute shopping, before heading off to Fiji, to warm up a bit, cos we've had enough of this winter in June lark!
see you all soon
loads of love
Rozi and Steve
xxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.089s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0557s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
