Northern Territory part 2

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Kakadu and the ‘Red Centre’ of Australia provide us with our first experiences of Aboriginal life, in various manifestations: culturally and historically significant cave paintings; the sale of indigenous art; informative educational centres and the less appealing sight of underemployed people drinking and arguing with each other in the street.

We knew very little about Aboriginal culture, so we couldn’t help but learn every day. It relies upon oral tradition and paintings, rather than a written language or history. The 250 or more languages were not documented until European settlement (one of the few positive contributions to Aboriginal life made by white settlers). The ‘dreaming’ myths that form the basis of the history of the Australian continent are animistic, featuring serpents, birds, yam-headed humanoids and living rocks, among other unusual creatures.

We saw plenty of unfamiliar creatures in real life too, in addition to those in Kakadu: rock wallabies; red kangaroos; a thorny devil lizard; a desert whip snake; a big black lizard (our taxonomy skills fail us here); galars; dingoes; emus and camels.

We saw many of these on a three day camping and walking trip to Uluru and the equally impressive King’s Canyon and Kata Tjuta. Out of the largely flat red landscape, all of these huge, ancient rock formations rise. They provide sources of Aboriginal stories, sunset backdrops, welcome shade, and channels for life-sustaining water.

Uluru is an iconic image familiar to Europeans like us. Seeing it at sunset and sunrise was everything we could have imagined – colourful, humbling, exciting and very photogenic. In some ways, the walk around and through Kings Canyon was more impressive because we arrived with no real expectations. We learned that it’s a true canyon, unlike something called the Grand Canyon in some country known as the U.S.A., which is a gorge.

Geological pedantry nonwithstanding, (Note: See how many examples of pedantry you can count in these blogs), the shapes and colours of the Northern Territory made a strong and lasting impression on us, and made for some great excursions and photography.

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Photos

Kings Canyon
It's a long, steep way down.

Kings Canyon
Peering over the edge with our travel buddies.

Kings Canyon
Spot the (other) photographer.

The sky at night
The earth's movement relative to the stars.

The rock!
Uluru (or Ayres Rock)

Thorny Devil Lizard
Spotted on the road by our driver.

Comments

[Mon & Paul Haley]

Uluru watering hole
What a stunning photo!!!