Last few weeks in Oz....

I've finally finished all my exams, and I'm officially on summer break. In November.
I had one false start to the break - I had intended to go sailing in the Whitsundays over the past weekend, but last week I got sick with some kind of stomach bug and had to cancel. I got some antibiotics on Friday though, and they seem to be helping a lot, so I'm going to head out later this week.


The plan right now is:

Wednesday - fly to Melbourne, spend the day exploring the city
Thursday - tour on the Great Ocean Road
Friday - spend the day in Melbourne, fly to Adelaide that night
Saturday - start the 3 day Kangaroo Island tour
Sunday - Kangaroo Island
Monday - Kangaroo Island, get back to Adelaide that night
Tuesday - Fly back to Sydney in the morning
Wednesday - see a show at the Opera House (Haydn's "The Creation" -it was his response to Handel's "Messiah" - should be interesting)
Thursday - fly to New Zealand


I'm not sure what internet access I'll have, but I'll try to keep the updates coming, and put up pictures when I can.

Day 7 - Sunrise at Uluru

The next morning we were up at 4:15 to go see sunrise over the Rock, which proved to be amazing.  We picked our spot on the side of the road and ate breakfast (Weet-Bix again) with some very hot tea to try to warm up some on the very chilly morning.

This is the Rock from a distance, shrouded in mist, with the sun about to rise behind it.  Amazing.

There were clouds on the horizon, so the Rock never turned red, but we did get to see the brush go golden as the sun came up.

In the far distance you can see Kata Tjuta

From there we headed out for a walk around the Rock

This is the "most permanent" water hole in the Outback, and part of what makes Uluru so special.  There is almost always water here, which means that there is almost always going to be food of some kind nearby, which means Uluru is the best place to be if you need to survive and the going is tough.

The temperature dropped quite a bit when we went into the shadow on the west side

On the picture above you can see the most controversial part of the Rock - the climb.  The grey streak going up the ridge is the chain (attached to a series of poles drilled into the Rock) that climbers hold on to while they go up.  The climb is sort of an embodiment of the relations between the Anangu people and the Australian Government.

For a very long time, Aboriginal people had no rights in Australia.  As Europeans moved west, they took what land they wanted and killed whoever stood in their way (not unlike European interactions with Native Americans).  Australian - Aboriginal relations have been very tense, perhaps coming to a head with The Aborigines Protection Amending Act of 1915, which allowed the Australian Government to separate Aboriginal Children from their families, resulting in "The Stolen Generations" of Aboriginal children raised by the state without any access to their parents.  The government continued to do this until 1969.

Sometime in the 1970s new laws came into effect that allowed Aboriginal communities to petition the Government to return ancestral lands, and the Anangu began a decade-long legal battle to reclaim Uluru.  The Australian Government was reluctant to give up their most prized tourist attraction, but finally in 1985 a compromise was reached.  The ownership of the land would be transferred to the Anangu, who would in turn lease the land back to the Australian Government for 99 years.  One of the terms of the lease was that the climb would remain open, despite the protests of the Anangu.  They took the deal in hopes that, as time went on and the old racist policies of the Government died out, they would eventually be able to negotiate a deal that would close the climb for good.

Why do the Anangu want the climb closed?  There are several reasons.  For one, the first section of the climb (up to the top of that rocky bit in the picture above) are part of a sacred path, climbed once a year by two Anangu elders as part of an extraordinarily important ceremony, and by boys as part of the ceremony where they attain manhood.  As part of Aboriginal law, nobody is supposed to climb Uluru otherwise, and certainly not meant to climb any higher.  Second, the Anangu believe that they are responsible for the protection of any visitors on their land - you are their guest, and they must look out for your safety.  And the climb is not safe.  High winds can come up out of nowhere, and there are no harnesses.  Each climber is secure only as much as they keep a firm grip on the chain.  Many people are killed and injured each year attempting the climb, and the Anangu feel responsible for every death or injury that occurs on their land.  Thirdly, as Greg put it:  if you are a guest in someone else's house, and they say to you "you can go wherever you like, go in the kitchen and make yourself a sandwich if you want, watch tv, do whatever, but just please don't go through that door there - that's my private area", you wouldn't immediately go open that door.  You would respect the wishes of your host.  When you are in Uluru, you are a guest and the Anangu are your host - and you should respect their wishes.

As things stand, you are legally allowed to climb Uluru, but the Anangu ask that you please do not.  The climb was closed the day we were there due to high winds, but our group had discussed it and we were not going to climb anyway.

After our walk we bid farewell to Uluru and set off back to Alice Springs.  Our first stop was a lookout for Mount Conner, an 859m mountain often mistaken for Uluru, as it is visible from the highway on the way there.

There was also a "lake" on the other side of the highway - a wide salt flat

"On the road again..."

Our next stop was a camel farm, where we got to ride the camels around the paddock, and learned just how uncomfortable it is to be on top of a galloping camel.  I suppose it takes some getting used to...

Not the prettiest animals, but they seemed pretty friendly

An emu

When we got back to Alice the whole group went out to dinner to celebrate Greg's last tour (after a nice hot shower), then it was back to the hostel for a good night's sleep.

The next day we flew back to Adelaide, spent the day wandering around, and then finally returned to Sydney the day after that, after a great spring break.

Day 6 - Kata Tjuta

As luck would have it, it did rain that night.  At around 2.  We all woke up to a light drizzle, which gave us just enough time to realize what was going on before the bottom fell out and it started pouring.  From there it was a mad dash (of sorts... we were all dragging unrolled swags) to the shelter that we had all declined to use earlier.  It turned out that there was exactly enough room for 21 people under there, which was convenient in that we all fit, but inconvenient in that if you were on the edge (like me) the rain had a tendency to sneak under the eaves and get you anyway.  But by 3 a.m. I was finding it hard to care too much, and there was little I could do about it.  So I zipped up the swag, pulled the flap over my head, and spent the night huddled in that cocoon, completely encased by the canvas.  It was actually not so bad - very cozy.
The rain had stopped by morning, and we woke up to a beautiful (if chilly) sunrise:

After an excellent breakfast of Weet-Bix, bead (with peanut butter or jam), and tea, we piled into the bus and headed out to Uluru.  Greg said he was going to change the itinerary a bit - we weren't meant to go to the Rock until later that evening, to watch the sunset.  However, Greg thought that, after the rain, we had a fair chance of seeing something really rare: waterfalls on Ayers Rock.  With that in mind, we were going to swing by the Rock, just to check.

Unfortunately, it hadn't rained hard enough to start the waterfalls, but we still got to see a wet Rock, which is pretty rare in itself.

From there we headed to Kata Tjuta (or The Olgas), a series of huge rock domes, for a hike through the aptly named Valley of the Winds.  It was still a bit wet and cold, and the sky cleared just long enough to make us think we were through the rain before it started raining again, but it was still an amazing hike.

"The Winking Man"

Kata Tjuta, like Uluru, is a very important place in Aboriginal culture.  The Anangu, which is a collective term for the various different Aboriginal tribes in the area, don't tell everything about their sacred sites since many of them have information that is only meant to be known by men, or women, or information that would mark a boy's passage to manhood, so they do not want that information floating around the world in case an Anangu should come across it by accident.  For example, all that is public knowledge about Kata Tjuta is that it has something to do with boys becoming men.  At one point we came to a spot on the trail where the rocks extended up to the right to form a kind of stage and the valley opened up a bit to the left to form a perfect hunting ground to trap a kangaroo (allowing the novice hunter multiple chances, since the roo would have limited ways out).  Greg told us about how the teacher would sit up on the rocks while the boy sat below, listening and learning.  Much of what is learned is told through stories, much like the parables in the Bible (I'll have some examples later).  Greg finished his story by pointing out this scratch in the rock:

For hundreds, probably thousands of years, this is the spot where the teacher would sharpen his spear while he told the stories to the student.  You can't really tell from the picture, but it is a deep, well worn groove - a physical reminder of the history of this place.

From there we hiked back out for a quick lunch before heading back to Uluru to take the Mala Walk, a short walk around about a quarter of the Rock, visiting several significant sites along the way.  Uluru figures heavily into the Dreamtime, a complex set of creation stories (and so much more - to consider it a set of stories is extreme simplification) comprising the Aboriginal religion.  One of the basic stories is that, when the earth was first formed, it was featureless.  Powerful creatures (in the form of the familiar animals around today, but much larger) moved across the land, forming its features as they went, spending their magic until they had shrunk to the size they are today.  Several locations in and around Uluru have stories centered around them, some of which are secret.

This cave was our first stop - I can't remember the details of the Dreamtime story, but the basic premise is that one of the creation creatures, a mole (the symbol of motherhood and protection, since she loved her babies so much that she turned her pouch upside down so that it wouldn't get filled with dirt while she was tunneling - hence why all moles today have pouches that face backwards), came to Uluru with her children.  She wanted them to have a safe place to stay while she went out to look for food, so she dug a cave into the side of the Rock.  To give them protection, she placed several boulders in front of the cave, with a small entrance; she also poked holes in the roof so that they could look out and see in case any danger appeared.
Greg explained to us how this story was very useful - if you were looking for shelter, and you know the story, you know what to look for - a cave with rocks in front of it and holes in the top.  Once you find the cave above, and recognize it from the story, you know that you have found the best shelter around - the cave that the mole (remember, symbol of protection) dug for her children.

Our next stop was the "blackboard" - a section of smooth rock under an overhang that is covered with layers of drawings, cataloguing centuries of people writing messages to eachother.

From there we moved on to another overhung cave that had served as a sleeping place for women and children, as well as a kitchen.  On one side (at the far end of the picture below, just to the left of the girl in the black jacket) is a natural depression in the rock that works quite well as an oven.

Next to the oven is another piece of history - this patch of rock is a grindstone, worn smooth by centuries of grain being ground on it.  The extent to which it is smoothed out is even more notable when it is considered that the Anangu only come to stay at Uluru if the summer is particularly dry, or about once every six ears or so (Uluru is the easiest place to survive in the Outback, so the Anangu only go there when they need to so as not to use up the resources there when they don't need them).

After we finished the Mala walk, we headed out to view the Rock during sunset, which was quite an affair.  There is a parking lot down the highway which is reserved specifically for tour buses after 4pm, and it fills up quickly.  We arrived around 4:10, and already several buses had taken up positions in the lot and more were arriving every minute.  We staked out our spot by the fence while four "volunteers" cooked up dinner while we waited for the sun to set.  As time went on, I noticed the different kinds of tours that would stop to watch the sunset.  There was quite a range - from the groups of young people like us, whose dinner consisted of a simple pasta with veggies, to the more... advanced... tour groups, whose guides set up tables with bottles of champagne.
Sunset at Uluru is supposed to be one of the most fantastic spectacles in the world, as the sunlight hitting the Rock goes through every shade of red until darkness.  Unfortunately for us, there were still clouds on the horizon from the storm earlier, so the reddening effect of the setting sun was minimal.  The view was still spectacular, however:

After the sun went down it was off to a different campsite to roll out the swags again (this time almost certain that it would not rain, as there was not a cloud in the sky) around the fire for a good night's sleep.