Day 5 - The Rock Tour

The bus picked us up bright and early the next morning to head out on The Rock Tour on what we learned was our tour guide Greg's last tour, which meant he was pulling out all the stops for this one. For starters, the other Rock Tour guides had decorated his bus, complete with Disney Princess tiara taped to the grill guard. Also, about five minutes outside town Greg stopped to pick up a "hitchhiker" who turned out to be his friend Em who works with the Rock Tour.

Anyway, we headed out for a five-hour drive to Watarrka, or Kings Canyon (all locations have two names, one European and one Aboriginal). We didn't get more than a half hour outside Alice Springs, however, before...

... a flat tire. Or tyre, depending what country you're in. No worries though, since the bus carries several spares (as any smart driver in the Outback should), so we were back on our way soon enough. As we drove off, Greg began telling us about the perils of Outback driving, from flat tires to kangaroos (which apparently react about the same to cars driving by as deer do in the US, and cause the same damage) to wedge-tailed eagles (one of the largest birds of prey in the world, with wingspans of around 2.5 meters, these guys like to eat kangaroos, which draws them to the highway, which makes them just as much of a threat to cars) to running out of gas (the petrol stations out here are few and far between). The whole thing was punctuated by the occasional stop to pull kangaroo roadkill off the road; Em, who is a joey (baby kangaroo) caretaker, told us more about what to do if we hit a roo: 1) don't bother checking your car from damage, your car is definitely damaged. 2) check the roo - if it is dead, check the pouch and take any joey you find to the nearest caretaker (they will raise it until it is old enough to survive on its own in the wild; most small towns or rest stations have joey caretakers) 3) pull the roo off the highway so that it doesn't attract eagles. She even told us a bit about joeys - apparently the best way to hold one is in your "pouch," under your shirt on your stomach. There they will be warm and can hear the sound of your heartbeat, and pretty quickly they will calm down and probably fall asleep. Greg told us one story of a joey he had taken care of - they let it out to hop around after a few hours, and once it decided it was time to go back to sleep it hopped back to Greg (who was now "mom" as far as the joey was concerned) and did a front flip through his legs and then sat up dazed on the other side, wondering why it wasn't in a pouch.

Anyway, the basic message was: if you're gonna drive in the Outback, be prepared, because this is pretty much all you're going to see for miles and miles:

The adventure didn't stop there though; almost as soon as we got going again, we saw this on the horizon:
It's a little hard to see from that far away - here, try this one:

Yep, a dust storm. Luckily only a small band of it crossed the highway, so it didn't cause any problems.

After a long morning of driving, we made it to Kings Canyon, where we hiked around the canyon rim, which of course required climbing up to the height of the canyon rim, which the designers of our trail decided to accomplish within the first few hundred meters:

The climb was well worth it though. Once we got to the top we had a great view of the canyon.

While we hiked, Greg told us about all the plants and their uses, such as the spear vine (which can easily be made into a spear) or a shrub with sap that is antibiotic and forms a waterproof seal when it dries. He also described to us various methods that plants have for dealing with the bush fires that occasionally rage across the Outback. For example, one kind of gum tree puts out leaves on every square inch of its trunk after a fire, enabling it to regenerate quickly; these leaves are shed once the tree has regrown regular leaves. Spinifex grass has resin in it that burns very hot, clearing away anything that might be around the grass and giving it room to regrow after the fire.

At one point Greg stopped and told us all to be really quiet - he had spotted something in the gum tree we were under: the rare Australian pygmy koala. He told us it was incredible that we had seen one, as they were really a bit of a mystery in the animal world. Some people thought they had been introduced to Australia on a trade ship from China:
If you can't quite make it out, here's a closer view:

After we moved on from the tree, Greg pointed out something that most of us had already figured out for ourselves. There is no such thing as a pygmy koala. That is a toy koala, made to clip on to backpacks, that one of Greg's friends had left for him to fool us with. He was right, though - it did come to Australia on a trade ship from China.

From there we hiked on, out to the rim of the canyon...

Where, unlike National Parks in the US, there was no fence, nothing between you and falling over the edge but your own common sense...
... which told me that I could get that far without any problem. Sorry mom... I assure you I was very careful, and there were people who went farther out than me.

From that position we could also see "the Tortoise and the Hare":

The hare is facing left, the tortoise right - the same rock is the body for both

As we kept hiking around, the view was incredible:

(Again, nothing stopped us from laying down and looking over the edge)

Some parts of the landscape looked like Mars

In this picture you can see the part of the cliff we lay down to look over earlier - just above the white patch on the right

Greg also told us about one of the greatest conspiracies ever pulled off by the Australian Government. Since it's a big boost to tourism, they have managed to convince the world that there is a very large red rock in the centre of Australia. This is not true. The sandstone which makes up Ayers Rock and these cliffs in Kings Canyon is white. However, the outer layer is constantly bombarded by the elements, causing the iron particles inside it to rust, giving it that red color. You can see the difference in the picture above - the white section is where a sheet of rock recently (that is, probably about 60-80 years ago) sheared away, exposing the white sandstone beneath. So we've been lied to all our lives - there is no giant red rock in the middle of Australia. There's just a giant white rock with a red dusting... (by now you've probably gotten a taste of Greg's very Australian sense of humor)

After the hike, it was back to the highway for the three hour drive to the cattle station where we'd be spending the night. On the drive there we stopped to "gather firewood" - which to Greg means "find a section where a bushfire has come through and killed all the trees, push the trees over, and tie them to the top of the trailer." Mere sticks or logs would not be suitable - he wanted trees. So we gathered them, a trailer full of these 10 foot tall slightly charred trees, ranging in trunk size from about as big around as your neck on down to wrist or two fingers or so.

We arrived at the campsite after dark, where those trees (with the help of some spinifex, which is the best firestarter I've ever seen) quickly became a nice warm fire.
After a hearty dinner of rice, beans, ground beef, and veggies, we rolled out our swags to settle in for a good night's sleep.

A swag is effectively an oversized sleeping bag made from canvas, with a sort of mattress built in to one side. Since it very rarely rains in the Outback, swags are easier to work with than tents, and they keep the dust off should the wind pick up. You just slip your sleeping bag inside the swag, zip it up around you, and lay back to watch the stars until you fall asleep. With your shoes under the swag as a pillow (apparently dingos, which are otherwise pretty shy, really like to chew on shoes, and if you leave them out overnight you will find that a dingo has run off with them in the morning), it is actually rather comfortable and cozy.

The only issue with swags is that they are not waterproof. But we figured that wouldn't be a problem - after all, we were in a desert, weren't we?