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Published: April 11th 2021
Uluru
Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, is a huge sandstone rock that juts out of the ground. The red centre, the green north east and the Great Barrier Reef
This is the third and last blog entry from my trip in Australia 25 years ago. Here I will present a mix of some lesser known sites, a few somewhat more known sites and two sites that are absolutely iconic.
Alice Springs Alice Springs is right in the centre of Australia and is popular among tourists much thanks to its proximity to the iconic Uluru/Ayers Rock. But there are also plenty of things to see in Alice Springs itself so it is unfair to dismiss the town as just a transport hub.
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Todd River: Much of the interior in Australia is very dry and arid and it almost never rains. This is especially true for the area around Alice Springs. The nature around Alice Springs is desert. The river that runs though Alice Springs, Todd River, is therefore almost always a dry river bed. Still they each year arrange a boat race in the river, the
Henley-on-Todd Regatta. The irony is that the "boats" they race are frames without any bottom. The "rowers" hold up the frame with their hands and run along the race course.
Uluru
Close up, Uluru has a wavy shape In fakt, it has been known that they have been forced to cancel the race because of rain. They could then not race because there was water in the river...
=> Date farm: Outside Alice Springs there is a date farm that allows visitors. Since I like dates and had never seen date palms before I just had to go. I remember that they had date ice-cream there. That was also a first for me.
=> School of the air: In central Australia distances are so great that it is impossible for children who live in rural areas to come to school. Instead they run lessons remotely via radio. At least they did then, back in the 1990-ies. I guess now they run the lessons as Zoom conference in Australia just like everywhere else.
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Uluru/Ayers Rock: Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, is a huge sandstone rock that juts out of the ground. It looks a bit odd since the surrounding land is totally flat and that the rock is over 300 meters high. Uluru is a very important spiritual site for the Aboriginal Australians. When I visited in 1995 it was permitted to climb Uluru. But
Uluru
Uluru rises abruptly. The surrounding area is relatively flat nowadays it isn't, mostly because climbing it is seen as disrespectful.
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Kata Tjuta/Olgas: Kata Tjuta, also known as Olgas, is a rock formation about 30 km from Uluru. Uluru and Kata Tjuta are part of the same national park.
=> Aboriginal village theme park: In Alice Springs it is possible to take a tour into the desert and visit an Aboriginal village theme park. It was labelled as a "genuine Aboriginal commune" and the guide pushed really hard on the issue that the people we met "live there" and that we visited their "home". When the guide was out of earshot the "village elder" admitted that it was all fake. He said that they all live in Alice Springs because it really sucks to live in the desert.
Gosses Bluff tour Gosses Bluff is the remains of a meteorite crater 160 km to the west of Alice Springs. I thought it could be fun to see a genuine meteorite crater so I signed up for a tour to this site. The highlight of the tour was of course Gosses Bluff itself. But they also included a few other sites in the tour.
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Standley Chasm: Standley Chasm
Uluru
It almost looks like a slice of Uluru is coming off is a narrow crevice named after
Ida Standley, teacher and humanitarian who worked with children who had one parent who was an Aboriginal Australian and one who was of European descent. These children were unwanted by both communities and would have been outcast if Ida Standley hadn't taken care of them.
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Palm Valley: Central Australia hasn't always been desert. 15,000 years ago it was different. Then it rained more in the interior. It rained enough so that forests could grow. But then it changed. It became drier and all the forests disappeared, all except a small pocket near Alice Springs. In Palm Valley the geology helps to preserve water in the ground so that a small grove of palm trees can grow there. It is a bit like a hidden oasis in the middle of the desert.
=> Gosses Bluff: Strictly, what can be seen at Gosses Bluff today isn't the original crater. That has eroded away millions of years ago. It still looks very much like a crater, but it is thought to be "the eroded relic of the crater's central uplift", whatever that means...
Coober Pedy Coober Pedy is a mining town almost 700 km
Uluru
This side of Uluru almost looks like a wave south of Alice Springs. Strictly it is in South Australia. But since I visited it after I was in Alice Springs I put it in this blog entry anyway. Not that there is much to put in. I ran into problems with my camera when I was in Coober Pedy and I lost almost all of my photos. One of the few is a picture of an unusually large opal. That's fitting because opals is the reason why Coober Pedy exists in the first place.
Mining for opals is one of the two main industries in Coober Pedy. According to Wikipedia there are more than 250,000 mine shafts there. Most of the mines are small, one entrance and a few small chambers below. When there is nothing more to dig up they simply start a new shaft and hollow out a few small chambers there. In summer it gets extremely hot in Coober Pedy. Some of the abandoned mines have therefore been converted to homes. During the hottest days it is more comfortable to live in a hole in the ground that in a house above ground.
McKinlay, Queensland The hamlet
McKinlay is a very small dusty
Climbing Uluru
When I visited in 1995 it was permitted to climb Uluru. place in the middle of nowhere. It would have been totally uninteresting, just a place where two highways meet, unless they had recorded a few scenes for the movie
Crocodile Dundee there. For those of you who still remember Mick Dundee, McKinlay is the setting of the fictional town Walkabout Creek. The local pub and hotel is named Walkabout Creek Hotel of course.
Cairns In the end of my trip in Australia I visited Cairns. I didn't spend much time in Cairns though because I went on three trips when I was there.
=> Daintree River / Rainforest: I visited a lodge in the middle of the rainforest to get to know what a rainforest is like. My favourite part of this visit was actually to walk in the forest at night. There is much activity in a rainforest in the night. When you walk around in the darkness and lighting up the forest with artificial light, the wildlife can quite easily be spotted since the eyes of the animals reflect the light.
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Undara Lava Tube: Lava tubes look like caves but are created in a different way. Think of a river in winter with ice on it.
Climbing Uluru
I took this photo during my climb of Uluru. But nowadays climbing isn't permitted because climbing it is seen as disrespectful. The ice is then a cover or a roof over the water. If the water stops flowing, a tunnel is created. Lava flows can behave in a similar way. The lava flows, cools at the top and a cover, or roof is created. If the lava stops flowing you have a tunnel, a lava tunnel. Supposedly, Undara Lava Tube is the largest lava tube in the world. Largest meaning that of the known lava tubes in the world, this has the largest diameter.
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Atherton Tableland: Atherton Tableland is a plateau southwest of Cairns. I went there on a hiking and camping trip. It was a nice trip but to be honest the hike was a bit dangerous. We were mainly hiking in rocky terrain and several times I was close to falling or getting stuck. With some bad luck I could have hurt myself.
=> Diving trip: In Cairns I took diving lessons and got myself a diving certificate. Included in the course was a visit to Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral reef in the world.
Sydney After Cairns I quickly made my way south towards Sydney. I made one or two stops on the
Uluru memorial
Over the years several people have perished while climbing Uluru. On these plaques are the names of some of them. way, but they were not interesting enough for me to include in this blog entry. I spent three days or so in Sydney, which is very little to be honest. I only publish one of the photos I took in Sydney - one of the opera house.
I hope you enjoyed reading about what I did when I visited Australia a quarter of a century ago. I must say that I enjoyed writing about it. It brought back a lot of memories.
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Rainyb
Lorraine Brecht
It looks like it's made of plastic ;o)