Uluru

On Tuesday I left Melbourne for a 4 day trip to Uluru - I was very excited! After a 3 hour flight I was picked up by Intrepid and taken to our camp near Uluru, Very basic but quite comfortable, and our barbequed chicken and salad lunch was delicious

The bus and kitchen

Our tents

Inside the tent was a fan, lamp and sockets - yey!

I soon found that there was an essential piece of Kit that I had to purchase - the Northern Territories are infested with flies!!!

Don't mock .......... most people were wearing them, I swear!

After lunch we went on a trek through the Olgas (Kata Tjuta), the temperature was 45 degrees and almost unbearable, fortunately it was only an hour and a half walk

That evening we went to see the sunset at Uluru, there were many tours there, all providing alcohol for their guests to drink. Our guide Bjorn told us that we were on sacred land and that the aboriginals had specifically asked them not to take alcohol there but Intrepid were the only ones that complied - what is the matter with people, don't they have any respect?

This time I braved the flies for the photo!

Where did that pop up from?

Whilst I was there I bought a painting done by one of the many aboriginal women who were selling their work. I thought it was beautiful. All paintings have a story and this one is of the 7 sisters (part of the star dreaming story called Yanjiripirri jukurrpa) - they are travelling (indicated by the parallel lines) to Mount Connor, Uluru and Kata Tjuta (the 3 circles), around the sides are bush medicines

After a massive barbeque of sausages, steak and kangaroo (I've never eaten so much meat) with cous cous and pesto pasta, we showered and went to bed - it was 9pm.

At 4.15 am we were woken by Bjorn as we were going to see the sunrise at Uluru. What a magical experience, we walked around the base which took 3 hours, thankfully at that time in the morning it was only 24 degrees

Just to prove the number of flies there were!

By way of a break - some birds

After our walk some of us had an educational meet with an aboriginal women who told us about the symbols in pictures and the tools that the men and women used - we had an interpreter with us. They are not keen on photos and definately no video.

We then walked to some caves where she explained what the drawings were and their meaning

The 'paint' they used were light and dark ochre

made from grinding down the rock and mixing

with water, the white was made from ash and the

black from charcoal

This is the mens cave where they taught hunting 

techniques and told dreamtime stories

The womens cave were they took shelter

in bad weather and taught the children

by drawing on the walls

There is a Cultural Centre which is run by white people in conjunction with Aboriginals where they are encouraging the locals to use their skills in arts and crafts to sell to tourists. They collect artefacts from all over the Northern Territories, they are non profit making and all proceeds go to provide resources for the Aboriginals. It is situated in a sensitive area so no photographs are allowed but I did see a studio where some people were working and the artefacts were beautiful especially the wood carvings.

When we left Uluru we had the pleasure of a 5 hour drive to Kings Canyon during which time we stopped off to see the third mountain - Mount Conner (Artilla and Attila) - and a salt lake which had been left from when most of Australia was under water millions of years ago.

Charlie and Bjorn

We also met a cockatoo called Charlie at a Camel farm that didn't seem to have any camels but they did have petrol . The owner of the camel farm rounds up wild camels by helicopter and then fattens them up to sell to the King of Saudi Arabia to eat - apparently their local camels have parasites and are not very healthy

After a shower we had a chicken Thai curry (thank you Ben our chef) and went to bed - it was 8.30pm! Just in case you are interested - the flies go to bed at sunset and come out again at sunrise, a blessed relief unless of course you are in a campsite at King's Canyon where the bathrooms are over run with moths that are dive bombing you on the toilet and in the shower - help! bring back the flies at least they are a lot smaller!

Bjorn woke us at 4am this time as we had been so slow the previous morning he didn't want us to be late for the dawn at King's Canyon. The first section of the 3 hour trek was 500 'steps' up a very steep hill - I made it but I definately felt that was on the wrong side of 60!!!!!

This is 'Pricillas crack' - used in the film

Pricilla Queen of the desert

The beach so called because of the ripples

that have been made millions of years ago

by the sea

A rock pool where we found tiny baby frogs

This succulant plant was originally coral

millions of years ago - it's sap is

extremely poisenous and can make you

go blind if it gets in your eyes

After Ben had made us lunch (at 11am!) we got back in the bus for another 5 hour drive to Alice Springs. On the way we stopped at an Emu farm where they had emus and petrol. It happened to be the exact centre of Australia and had a structure in the exact place

We arrived at Alice Springs and I loved my comfortable spacious room with 

en-suite!!!!!!

I didn't take any photos of Alice because it was so depressing. I went to the bottle shop to buy a beer to drink in my room and they wouldn't let me have it because I didn't have any ID on me. There is a computer above the till which has names of those banned from buying alcohol (it is the law in the Northern Terratories). They don't say it but it's clearly aimed at Aboriginals. From what I saw they mostly looked down and out and sat around the town trying to sell their paintings. they didn't look like they had 2 halfpennies to rub together

Just looked at my stats on Blogger - who knew that people around the world would be reading about my trip?