The Red Centre

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16-21 Mar - The Red Centre
On our way back to Adelaide from the Clare Valley we got word that our car, Jenny, would take a week to fix (a week!) so another side trip was planned, this time to the real outback: the red centre.
We did some last minute arrangements from Frank and Francis’ house (our kind hosts once again), which included a return flight to Alice Springs and the hire of a 4WD Landcruiser camper for 6 days.
Taking a mid-morning flight had us in Alice Springs by midday - geez the baking heat really hits you out here! We didn’t look like the troupie types decked out in our business class clothes but a quick change into shorts and singlets we looked like every other backpacker tourist in the centre. After a quick stock up on supplies and a 20 minute wait with the local alcoholics and cowboys for the bottle-o to open at 2pm we were driving on our way to Rainbow Valley; the first stop on our Red Centre itinerary.
Rainbow Valley is only accessible by 4WD (yay! Troupie!) and therefore limits the amount of tourists that can get to it. When we arrived there was only one other family there and ultimately we were left to enjoy the sunset on our own. Rainbow Valley is a localised range of jagged cliffs that are striped different colours of yellow orange and white. Below it sits a clay pan, which after rain becomes a big reflective pool. Unfortunately we were a couple of days late - they did get some rain recently but the water had receded away from the base of the cliffs.
Once it got dark, it got really dark out here. The stars were spectacularly clear and the expanse vast enough that you couldn’t help but feel pretty insignificant in the whole scheme of life.
We have to admit to being caught up a bit by the remoteness - a few unusual noises and the troupie’s squeaks had us imagining a Wolf Creek scenario and we made an escape plan to get the hell out of there quick smart (if we needed to) before we could get to sleep.
The next morning (17 Mar), after no Wolf Creek type occurrences, we hopped back into the troupie and headed straight to Uluru. It’s a fair way longer than most people imagine - nearly 500kms from Alice Springs so a good 5 hours drive. The further you get away from Alice Springs the higher the fuel costs are; the most we paid was $1.67/L for diesel (so no complaints from you guys about the current fuel prices please!).
We ended up arriving at Uluru at about 2pm so it was pretty damn hot at 38°, hot enough to close the walk over the rock (apparently they close it when it gets above 35°) much to the disappointment of quite a few tourists. Tim and I had already decided to not climb the rock out of respect to the local Anangu people, but I was surprised how many other people came to Uluru wanting and expecting to be able to the climb. We did want to walk around Uluru but at that temperature we decided to do it earlier the next day when it was a bit cooler.
We did drive around it (3 times actually) to get an appreciation of the size of it. That is definitely one of the things that hit’s you first; the rock is enormous. It also has a definite presence, something that is not easily explained. It’s feels old and it engenders a level of deep respect, similar to when see an old, proud man with his back rigid but leaning on a cane, but whose watery eyes betray a knowledge of knowing and having seen things that you haven’t. The colour is also incredible, and it emanates a heat, red in colour and red-hot. I have seen it many times in pictures and on telly, but it is a completely different experience seeing it in person.
After driving around it we decided to visit the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park Cultural Centre to learn and understand what Uluru means to the local Anangu people and to hear the dreaming stories for Uluru. The Centre itself is an excellent example of architecture, which combines local indigenous knowledge in its form, design, and function of representing of information. Tim and I spent some time reading the information boards on the dreaming stories and it was here that we were first introduced to the concept of tjukurpa (chook-er-pa), which is the law, religion, and customs that governs koori people. Tjukurpa is an Anangu word but there is a word for this in every dialect and koori language. It’s an incredibly all-encompassing concept which western culture cannot contain in one word. It describes how koori people relate to the land, the stars, each other; the rules relating to skins (or tribes kind of like family and extended family) and rules of inter-skin marriage; men’s and women’s business; food gathering and hunting; medicine and it’s transference; and an individual’s responsibility to its community and culture. It goes some way to explaining koori people’s intense connection to their environment.
The Centre also includes a traditional National Park style information centre, which also has very informative information on various aspects of Anangu tjukurpa, including park management (such as burning, waterhole maintenance and sacred site management) in co-operation with the federal national park management.
One of the things that particularly captured our attention was the “sorry rocks”. Every week 18kg of rocks taken from Uluru is sent back to the Cultural Centre with notes from all over the world, both with signatories and anonymous, apologising for taking the rocks and wishing that they be returned. These notes and a small collection of the rocks are on display in the Cultural Centre. Reading through a selection of the notes one thing becomes apparent; the deep level of uncomfortable feelings the rock takers or receiver’s have by keeping the rocks in their possession. There is no “curse” as such but many letters describe being subjected to bad luck or ill-health since acquiring the rock/s and go to great lengths to remedy it by sending them back. I don’t think I’m the only one to feel Uluru’s presence obviously.
We were able to get quite a lot of information on the area including a brochure on the self-guided Mala Walk and the Mutitjulu Walk. The rangers run a free-guided Mala Walk and interpretation at 8am every morning, which we planned to do the next day so we decided to do Mutitjulu Walk that afternoon before sunset. Tjukurpa (or the dreaming story) tells of the clash between the two ancestral snakes Kuniya and Liru with marks and signs of the battle that remain on Uluru in the area.
From here we drove to the sunset viewing car park and had our pick of the spots.
I set up on the roof of the troupie to get photos of the sunset over Uluru without other tourists getting in the way. The place was packed! I actually started a bit of a trend - there were about 10 of us enjoying the sunset from our lofty position.
I can’t think of many other things that can rival sunset over Uluru.
Later that evening back at the Yulara resort, we enjoyed a bush plum marinated steak and green coloured beer at the bar and grill to celebrate St Patrick’s Day (we’d almost forgot!)
We had an early start (18 Mar) to get out to Uluru for the sunrise (geez we’re not good with the early starts, we only just made it thanks to some low cloud). We had our breakfast watching the rock turn from brown to purple to red over the course of the next hour and a half. Most of the busses only stayed around for half an hour so we were left with the other drive yourself travellers.
We joined Ranger Sharon for the start of Mala Walk from the base of the climb. We had a pretty big group and the tour went for 2.5 hours (an hour longer than normal). She introduced us to the tjukurpa for the area including the dreaming story of the Mala (hare-wallaby people), the sacred sites, bush medicine and bush food. She also explained why the Anangu people ask you not to climb the rock.
The climb follows the sacred route taken by the Mala Men when they first arrived at Uluru and as such has great spiritual significance in Anangu tjukurpa. The Anangu are also the custodians of the area and take responsibility for the safety of visitors. Any injuries or deaths (there have been hundreds over the years!) are therefore a source of distress to them. Anangu people don’t climb and they ask that you respect their tjukurpa and not climb either. As it says in the Lonely Planet: If you don’t climb over the alter of Notre Dame Cathedral or walk into mosques during prayer to respect their culture, then don’t climb the rock and respect Anangu culture. Someone in our group asked why they didn’t close the climb altogether, and because they acknowledge that there is now a culture for our generation to climb the rock, eventually it will be closed but when people’s attitude changes or concerns for the impact to the rock becomes too great (apparently you can now see the damage the walk has caused from satellite images).
Ranger Sharon wanted it closed sooner rather than later - only the week before she was first on the scene after a man slipped from the climb and fell 10m onto his head. If we were wavering whether to climb this talk would have convinced me not to, so I was surprised to overhear two related families from our tour arguing with each other about whether to climb or not - half the families, the adult men, climbed.
After the guided walk, Tim and I set off to walk around the rock (a good 2.5 hours at our normal pace in this heat). It was impressive to see the different areas of the rock with waterfalls, waterholes and different vegetation changing around the rock. There were also traditional shelters provided around the track to provide some respite from the intense sun, which were amazingly cooler by at least 5-10°.
After our walk we re-hydrated up again (staminade was a great tip Ben and Tina!) and drove out to Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) for the afternoon and sunset. You can see this group of rocks change as you travel around them - the traditional “front on” view is only one part of the big picture. Climbing these rocks is a definite tjukurpa no-no but we did the short walk through the main gorge to see the waterhole (amazing in this climate) and sit and listen to the wind whistle past the conglomerate rock walls as the late afternoon sun cast shadows through the gorge. We then settled back on top of the troupie to watch the rocks turn purple in the early evening.
It’s going to be hard to top these two sunsets!
L

19 Mar Watarrka (Kings Canyon)
This morning we back tracked some 14okm of the Lasseter Highway to take the Luritja road out to Watarrka (King’s Canyon). We checked into the KC Resort and set up our campsite before driving out to the walker’s car park. The temperature was 38 degrees in the shade (there was a shaded thermometer at the track head under a novelty sized akubra hat), and the sign suggested we consider not setting out on the 2-hour canyon rim walk. We had limited time so we loaded the film into the camera, the fly nets onto our hats, the staminade into our water bottles and with determination; we took on the very steep climb to start the rim walk. The views up into the steep walls of the canyon show a lush green in the water catchment at the base of rust coloured walls that contrasts to the parched red sands that surround us.
Along the rim of the canyon, we wander through eroded rock that have the appearance of large beehive formations with evidence of an ancient sea bed on the flats, the water rippled sands frozen in time as the rock on which we now stand - in the middle of a vast desert. Strangled gum trees have established themselves against the odds with searching roots that plunge deep into the rock crevices to find scarce water and nutrients. There is a deep water hole deep in the canyon that is a refreshingly cool swim at the halfway point of the walk. Continuing further around the opposite side, we could witness the effects of the erosion and weather in peeling large section of the walls, falling to the canyon floor.
After a warm night and a hard days walk, we hoped to sit down to a cool beer and a meal at the KC Resort’s bar. We found out they only seem to have food on every second night as we sipped the most expensive beer we have paid for on our trip yet! Lucky we had some supplies remaining in the troupie camper to fashion a meal out of.
T

20 Mar West MacDonnel Ranges to Alice Springs
We purchased the permit ($2.20) to travel the Mereenie Loop, a 154km rough and sandy dirt road through Aboriginal land that took us more directly to the West MacDonnell Ranges. Having the Landcruiser gave us the confidence to take the track. The West Mac’s is a distinctly striped, layers of red rock on layers of white rock, dotted with the matte green of desert scrub along its reach east into Alice Springs and beyond into the East MacDonnell Ranges. 132km out form Alice we stopped at the Gorges that are where Desert Rivers have cut through the range such as Ormiston and Serpentine Gorges. We also visited the Ochre pits where traditional owners source the coloured ochres for ceremonial purposes today as they have done for tens of thousands of years. The white, yellow and red ochre was traded over vast distance by tribes - some was used in the cave paintings of Uluru.
We drove into the Caravan Park set at the base of the ranges in Alice to find surprisingly grassy campsites. We headed into the town for a good value dinner at a pub in the mall. The social problems of Alice were obvious but not really confrontational to a visitor. With some understanding of the circumstances regarding the displacement of aboriginal communities it was something that generated more empathy for the challenges of this community than fear of the problems.
T

21 Mar Alice Springs to Adelaide
We spent the morning at the Alice Springs Desert Park before returning the troupie camper to Brtiz and flying back to Adelaide. After Ballarat’s Sovereign Hill experience, we were dubious - it was however, one of the highlights. The Park is an accurate recreation of the four distinct desert environments you encounter in the centre: arid; dry bushland; river’s run and coolabahs. We started with the birds of prey show, followed by a self-guided audio tour through the desert areas. The guide presentation was outstanding and educational. Presented by Vincent from Anangu (Uluru) mob he said, “I smile differently to you folk - some of my teeth have been knocked out to show I tell the stories of my Grandfather - true”. We learnt about the bush foods and bush medicines of his people and the story of the Mala at Uluru and how the tribes to the South carry on this story. The intimate knowledge of the Aboriginals with their land and all of the knowledge of food and medicine passed on through their tjukurpa may never be shared due to a lack of trust of governments and corporations, that their “intellectual property” may not be recognised. This is not unreasonable considering these people lost their lands to pastoral leases and watched as their art and culture are increasingly commercialised, capitalised and exploited for profit by others with no respect for the concept of the tjukurpa of the land.
T

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