Catching up on Alice, part 2

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FRIDAY 16TH MARCH

Parents and Aunty Mandy came this day. In typical style, my phone wasn’t working, so I didn’t get their call to say they had landed… oh, yes, that’s right, they didn’t call. If they had, I would’ve reminded them to go to Standley Chasm frst, as it is the one that closes. So they trundled off to see the West Macs, just like I had… and took some great photos. I am unashamedly using said shots intermixed with my own in this post, just so you know…
…I had a pool party to go to that afternoon, so it suited me fine to do this… the pool party was, of course, in the hospital pool, just behind the main wing of the hospital. I think I may have gouged Ananda’s leg (one of the medical Students) racing him over Atlantis; the giant, blow-up obstacle course set into the pool. Sorry!

Around seven pm the folks picked me up in their fake 4wd (a RAV4, blokes), we picked up some alcohol, had dinner (At Keller, the Indian, Swiss Australian and Seafood Restaurant, as seen in that Billy Conolly show) and repaired back to my much admired flat.

TO ULURU

We arose early, and started our trek down to Uluru and Kata-Tjuta national park. First Stop was a memorial marker to some guys who’d do this race, I think it was from Darmin to Adelaide, with no speed limits. You can imagine that, there’s miles and miles of straight line roads, with nothing to stop you doing what your engine I capable of. Well there were checking stations along the way, and these guys managed to plough into to officials, killing themsellves and the officials. Pretty rough. Funnily enough, that didn’t kill the race, although I’m not sure what did. (Edit: have tried now to get more info off the web. Just don’t know enough, sorry.)

The Next stop was only a further 100 K or so down the road: The Henbury Meteorite Craters. They are 9 or so craters created when a meteorite broke up very close to it’s impact. Just walking around them is humbling.

Comment for the day: “These rocks look like slag. You know, as if they’ve been heated up.” Yes, folks, metoerites get hot when they his the earth, and little of the rocks around were the traditional sandstone/conglomerate of the region.

Then we headed back down the dirt track, back onto the Stuart Highway, all the way down to the turn-off to the Lasseter Highway. The Track that we’d been on, by the way, was the Ernest Giles Road, and represented a long cut to the Kings Canyon: Sure, it’s a short cut on the map, but unless it improved considerably, you couldn’t drive abouve 45 k/h along it!

We stopped at the lookout to Mt Connor, on the Highway. The Mountain itself is on private land. (bus tours get closer, but hey, I don’t see anyone climbing it, so who cares?) Next stop was Curtin Springs, and fuel at $1.65/l (I hope I never have to look back on this thinking about the good ‘ole days). They were looking for a cook for their tourist attraction… I think it would be a great place to go if you were really running away. It’s quite literally in the middle of nowhere, on a ranch (called, would you believe it, Curtin Springs), and it’s the sort of place where no one’d ask questions you didn’t want to answer.
Then, at last, Voyages Resort, at Yulara. Now, my folks had been sold this idea of Yulara being a sizeabl town out this way, and even I’d had the idea there might be a community there, but…
…There’s the resort. There’s a shopping centre, in which you can chrge your grocerys to your room account. There’s a medical centre, no doubt similar in it’s financial arrangements. There’s a petrol station, and there’s housing… for the resort workers.

I met one, weeks later. He came into the hospital with Fever of unknown origin. Turned out it was, true-to-life Malaria. Must have brought it with him when he came over from India, 9 months previously.

The local aboriginal community, the Mutitjulu Community (which I am told, holds very few actual traditional owners, but again, that could be a Ross Pollock fact), is within the National Park itself. Which was, obviously, our next stop.

Now, something I haven’t talked about so far… The Hawes Family Curse was in full effect. It rained on the Friday. It was threatening to rain all day Saturday. Which actually, for me made the weather bearable for the first time in four weeks.

But, National Parks Passes in hand, we went straight for the obvious and wondrous first tourist attraction in Uluru Kata-Juta National Park: Kata-Tjuta.

THE OLGAS

Stuff that Rock thingy. This is, far and away, the best part of the trip. We drove up to th Olgas, on this amazing circuitous route which gave us two views: the length and the breadth of the stones. The colour was amazing, the rough, pebblecrete effect of them ust unbelievable, Their existence, well, nearly impossible. And best of all, you can climb all over them. Of course, most of them are completely impassable, being made up of verticle sides that you’d need to be a champion rock ckimber for, but we all went (courtesy of some chivvying from me) on the Valley of The Winds walk, and, three hours or not, it was worth every minute of it. Walked into a blind ended valley and felt completely surrounded by giant conglomerate heads. Met another couple who had also lost their luggage courtesy of QANTAS, at the “second lookout”. Walked beyond the second lookout, and into what must have been the Valley of the Winds… a round, bowl-like valley opening north-west, but otherwise surrounded by Olgas. I think we all agreed that it was the best part of the trip. I will share my photos, but don’t think it even comes close. The joy of it is the three-dimensionality, and overwhelming… overwhelming… There-ness.

I have no other words for it.

ULURU

Well, after the Olgas, it seemed to be just a rock. We drove around it at this point (it was getting late, we’d spent most of the day driving, if you recall), looked at the sacred sites, looked at the little rock, then drove back to the sunset viewing area.

Remember how it was threatening to rain? Well it did, when we were travelling between The Olgas and Ayer’s rock. Not enough to set off the famous Ayer’s rock waterfalls, but enough that the sky was cloud covered. Which meant no real sunset, which meant no huge change in the colours. Slowly the rock faded from it’s impossible red, through to maroon, then the grey you get when there isn’t quite enough light for any but the rods in your eyes to pick up.

Once it was nearly so dark you could no longer see the Rock we went back to the resort, to discover the A la carte menu was off for the resort itself, but we could go to Geckos, in the village. The Village Turned out to be a little square with a fountain in the middle of it (The wastage of water in a region that has an evaporation rate of 3 m per year continues to shock me), and various shops surrounding. Including a post office and an IGA. Independent or not, it still allowed you to charge your groceries to the room account.

Geckos was nothing flash, but ‘alright’. The prices were reasonably competitive If food is that important to you, go in the high season, when the a la carte menu operates.

Well, we went to bed late, and got up early, for, you guessed it, sunrise at Uluru. Which had it’s moments of beauty, despite the increased cowding In comparison to the sunset viewing. The sunrise itself, off to the east, was gorgeous desert colours. And, for a brief moment, the sun flahed apon an area of the rock we had nicknamed the ventilation grills, and the rock almost fluoresced its orange-red to the world. Apart from that, the sunrise was a reversal of the previous sunset. With more people.

The Ventilation Grills. Ahem, er, yes. Naturally we were comparing The Rock to that other famous Rock, ie the 1/40th model version outside Karuah, on the Pacific Highway. (Editor: Having passed it just this week, I can tell you… it makes the real one more impressive). But in our comparison, we noticed this feature of horizontally ridged rock, with the ridging so deep, one could not see the back. Part of the rock seems to flow over this like a very poor paint-job over ventilator grills.

Well, we then went on the Mala walk, seeing some fascinating rock formations, such as the wave (all actions inspired by tour group of japanese before us), and multiple, multiple caves with paintings. It told the Story of the Mala (Rock Wallaby) People, who were hunted into almost oblivion by a Western Deserts People. The walk led to one of the three permanent waterholes around the base of the Rock.

Following this we went to the Mutitjulu Walk, which took you into the Mutitjulu waterhole, the most permanent of the three permanent waterholes. It was very beautiful, and very tranquil in there.

After this, we left Uluru. There was a base walk, but it was already half ten, and we still had a long day ahead of us. And I don’t think much was lost in losing the base walk, most you could see from the car.

Well… Back along the Lasseter, then up the Luritja Road... Passed the other End to the Ernerst Giles Road… And on, to Kings Canyon… W stopped for ice-cream at another service/cattle station along the way... I tell you what, I reckon every cattle station around here runs a side line in petrol and tourists.

GEOGRAPHY LESSON

Worth skipping unless you're a nerd like me, and this is actually interesting to you. Or, for a better explanation, oh, I dunno... Wiki it?

But... Once upon a time a long long time ago the land was much higher than it is now. And it was covered by a vast inland sea. No we knew that, right? well, two different layer formed, and they think, overlapped a little. One was made of a lot of rocks, with sand in between. The other was just a whole heap of sand and, well, more sand. This was in a period quite literally before plants ad animals had calcified bits to deposit into limestone. Underneath this was a layer called Alice springs Granite. This is laike, three times as old as the inland sea. And we're talking periods of hundreds of thousands of years. Anyway, these layers were depoited, and more porous sand stone was deposited above them, and then the inland sea dried out.
Then the land buckled. Quite literally. It has a name, it was like 150 000 years ago, but massive pressures forced the rocks to form curled waves. In some places, like Simpsons Gap and Elelry Creek, you can see the folds are quite tight. But what happened next was that the rocks started eroding. All the soft stuff eroded off. And left flat tables of harder stuff: that formed Mt Connor, a mesa mountain. But for some reason, it all eroded to for a relatively flat land. But for reasons not really known (and this is what is so frustrating), The Rocks of Uluru and Kata tjuta did not erode in the same way, and instead eroded into their well known, fanatastical shapes. Now remember thoe two original layers: well, when the earth buckled, one layer ended up on one side of an up-buckle, and the other, on the other side. All of the up buckle eroded, down flat, but the conglomerate layer with all the ricks, eroded into Kata Tjuta, and the plain sandstone, eroded into Uluru. Hence Uluru is not a floating boulder, but an outcrop of an entire layer of the earth. They think the down-buckle may go as low as 5 or 6 km into the ground.

Now, the conglomerate rocks at The Olgas are quite interesting, because the bits of other rock that they are made up of expand and contract at different rates to the sandstone around it: especially if they are half ecxoed by weathering. Which means that as you walk down a surface of an olga, you see rocks that have split off even with the surface of the larger conglomerate: as if someone has come through and evened a path off for you. Now, surely Uluru is like a giant version of that? Uluru must expand and contract to a different degree than the same rock that's under ground, covered by the desert. So what I want to know, is has Uluru split off from it's mother layer, being stuck on the surface? And if not, why not?

Ok, back to the story...

KING’S CANYON AND THE MEREENIE LOOP ROAD

Kings Canyon was beautiful. After that much Desert, (and believe me, it was more than enough), to walk into the canyon, up to the viewing platform, and just sit in the cool of the trees was really pleasant.

We had watched as the George Gill Mountain Range had come closer to the road, and blot out more and more of the desert feel of the place, and here the stark beauty of the mountains really came to the fore. Again, photos cannot do justice to domething that has to be felt more than seen. I wanted t do the rim walk, but it was getting on in the afternoon, so that plan was given up. Also, I’d have been alone: Dad’s knees weren’t up to it. Still, gotta leave things for next time, eh?

On leaving Kings Canyon, we traveled further up, throught Kings Canyon resort, and, stopping at a fuel station for fuel and a Loop Pass, continued on, to the Mereenie Loop.

Mereenie Loop road is a great experience. You start on paved road, which, within a couple of kms, becomes ‘gravel’. That is, red dirt, red dust and red stones. At the start, we were greeted by a wiry bush, standing about 50cm tall, growing in the middle of the road. Now all paved roads in the NT are narrow: barely wide enough for two cars to pass comfortably. I’m very much glad we didn’t pass any of those giant road trains. But the ‘gravel’ roads are wide, about five or six cars widths, with the tracks going all over the place, forging out the best and least ridged road. We could average 80 km/h along this, and did, with Aunty Mandy the Off-road specialist at the wheel. It had rainde on our way up to Kings canyon, which meant the road was damp, but was by no means wet or dangerous.
First we had to cross the George Gill Range, barely more than a series of hills at this point, which meant a series of switch-backs, with a lookout at the top, then another series of switchbacks back down again. And then we headed East for a while. The Road was straight. Like, so straight it was unbelievable. You looked down on it from the top of the hill, and you could see forever, and forever, there was a straight red ribbon through the green scrub plain. Yes, green. Remember, it’s been raining on and off for four days now.

So we drove. And drove. Occaisonally there would be a random track going of into the bush. Saw heaps of shrubs, heaps of termite mounds. At one point we went over a ridge that was a little higher than the others: there was a 44 gallon drum on the side of the road. On it was painted “Lift em Foot”; timely advice. On the other side of the ridge: “Put em down”.
Slowly the scrub changed, the sand lost it’s bright orange colour, fading slowly back to the yellow nearer alice Springs. We were approaching land that at least at some point had been grazed. We were also approaching, at a very oblique angle, some ridges running east-west. Or they approached us, as they slowly rose out of nothing. Perhap this was the Western edge of the Macdonells.
And then we saw wild animals. No, don’t be silly, this was the Australian Desert, not a petting zoo. We started by seeing some Camels. Then there were some brumbies. That’s when I opened my big mouth and said: “There’s also supposed to be wild Donkeys and wild Goats out here.” So, of course, over the next ridge were the Wild Donkeys. A little further on were the goats, but before we got to them, we had to stop suddenly. The camels were across the road. There were three of them (we’d seen maybe a hundred all up). Well, the first two got the message nice and quickly, and trundled off the road, but the third one just stood there, looking at us: “So what are you going to do about it?”
It was only when a pair of off-roading 4WDs came in the other direction that it finally, with a contemptuous snort, did a 360 degree trotting circle, and moved off the road.

We’d only gone another couple of Kms… when lo and behold, there’s another one! This time we were not rescued by some-one coming the other way, but perhaps this camel was not so stubborn: it moved off by itself. After these encounters, herd of camel and brumbies became a regular prospect, as did, eventualy, cows. We also saw one rabbit. The donkeys, Mandy wanted to get out and pat… we didn’t let her, because clearly the next thing she;d be asking, was could she keep it!

The sun was low in the horizon by the time the Mereenie loop ended and we started on Larapinta drive. Not that you could tell any change, it was still dirt road, and was heading in roughly the same direction. We were still heading roughly east, but the road would do a wide jog each time we passed through a ridgeline, and suddenly, we’d be through into another valley. It was starting to get dark by the time we hit the turn off to Namatjira Drive (although, in reality, Larapinta Drive took a left hadn turn, and if you didn’t go with it, the road you ended up on was Namatjira Drive.

Going left also led to Gosses Bluff. I was quite keen to go explore it, but, as I said, it was getting dark, and we made an executive decision that some thing needed to be left for later. Just outside of Hermannsburg, there was a sign to turn off for Namatjira’s House. Just one sign, and it was nothing I’d heard of, but sure enough, we followed the turn off, and 100m down the road, there was a gorgeous, white-washed cottage with steepled roofs, weeds in the garden and it’s windows smashed in, that was marked as Namatjira’s cottage. We also, in the last of the light, made a little tour of Hermannsburg, looking for a petrol station with public toilets, and saw, from the outside at least, the original mission.

And then came the long drive in the dark down Namatjira drive. And in the Rain. For the first time we saw a Floodway actually with water in it (the Floodways were dips in the road that, presumably, marked dry watercourses crossing that road). We got into Alice about 8pm, had a late dinner at The Red Ochre Grill (My favourite, even if pricey), then collapsed into bed not very much later.

I, of course, got up to do a fifteen hour shift the next day (You know how if you’re tired enough, you don’t lay down memories… Ugh!), the folks got up, and went to Standley Chasm at opening time, saw the Rock Wallabies there, then flew home.

Ok, following that, you might be glad when I finally start my travel diary, and leave you in peace!

Will start a new entry, methinks.

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Photos

A Meteorite crater...
A few million years on

Mt Connor
Oh, and Auntie Mandy, Mum and I

The Olgas
Dwarfing the scenery. Mum and Dad

The Rock
Promise, only one shot

Mala Walk
Well, a few closeups? Mandy and I

A Close Close-up of the Rock
The Rock is Feldspar, which when unoxidised is a greyish colour. But when exposed to the sun, water and, of course, oxygen, it turns the deep red we know and love. Oh. The hand is Mandy's

King's Canyon
Was just too big to get on film. Look here: Someone's come along with a giant trowel, and started to smooth it over!

Storm!
Mastly just threatening, which was a good thing. But Still got some rain. Desert? Hah!

Meerenie Loop
These were all over the place. There were two others, but I didn't catch them.

The Road goes Ever On and On
In a straight line. For.. well, a while and a bit.

Wildlife
What? you wanted it to be Native, as well?

Seen these before.
I hope you feel privileged. This is part of the last remaining wild herds!

Namatjira House, Namatjira Road
Considering he was famous, and earnt a lot of money in his own lifetime: humble, eh?