ajft

Where?

Yulara, Coober Pedy 29° 1' 0" S 134° 43' 0" E

There was a huge thunderstorm last night from about 3 to 4am. Constant lightning and heavy rain kept us awake. The tent dripped and leaked around its seems — Jo and I were regretting using the tents provided and not digging our own out of my bag! It finally cleared up around five a.m., just as we getting in time for a quick cup of tea before piling into the bus to drive out to the Uluru sunrise viewing area. Heading into the national park we all had to hold our entry passes up to the windows to show we'd already paid — a bit of a joke really, as the passes aren't valid unless they're signed, and there's no way that the rangers can see 15 passes as a bus drives through the gate!

Around the rock to the sunrise carpark and join the throng, once again surprised at the number of people here. One busload asked Sandy quite sternly to move the bus out of their line of sight — it didn't occur to them to walk 5m further along the road!

Like last night, once again there was a lot of standing around and waiting, but unlike last night the results weren't really worth it. The sun gradually came up through the clouds and the rock gradually got lighter — no amazing colour changes, no "Oohs" and "Aahs". The only point of interest being the fog and low clouds over the top of Uluru and Kata Tjuta looking impressive shrouded in thick fog, but too far away to photograph.

Back in the bus, back to Yulara for breakfast, then back again to Uluru for the walks. We arrived at the start of the Mala walk just in time to join one of the rangers for a free tour, as Sandy freely admitted, he knew far more than she did, and she was coming along to learn too. He started off a little self-conscious, speaking a little too soft and a little too quickly, but soon got over it and was a wealth of information. One major problem was hearing him over the noise from all the frogs in the waterholes! Very loud, and sounding quite like the bleating of sheep or goats.

We learned a little of the Anungu and Mala people, and the stories that go with Uluru, but as was pointed out a few times, without being a member of those families, the only stories that can be told are the equivalent of nursery rhymes — very basic childrens' stories giving only the outlines of the significance of the sites. This goes for all the dreaming stories Australia-wide, so there's a whole lot here that I'll never know. The stories explain partly why the Anungu strongly request that visitors not climb the rock; but in a trade-off with the tourism operators, its not forbidden. The tourism operators claim that if visitors couldn't climb, nobody would come here, and both they and the Anungu would have no income. We asked how many people respect the Anungu's wishes and were quite surprised — 80-85% of visitors still climb, although in certain demographics it is much higher. According to the ranger almost 100% of visiting American and Japanese ignore the native requests and climb.... At the conclusion of the guided walk, Jo and I headed off anti-clockwise around Uluru while the rest of the group detoured back to the bus to top up drinks, then set off clockwise. A long walk. A very long walk! The most fascinating parts of Uluru are all the places that are of special cultural significance, there are signs forbidding entry and photography, and $5000 fines for breaking these rules. It's all a little confusing though; from a kilometre or two away all the photos show all of the rock, but up close one whole end is off-limits. Should all of the thousands of tourists be fined for taking their photographs from the sunset viewing area? Should NASA be fined for their satellite photos of the top of the rock? Would the Anungu prefer that nobody too any photographs at all? I'm really not sure.

Finally back at the carpark around noon, stupidly neither of us had taken much in the way of food! Must be turning into a stupid tourist — the bus driver didn't tell me to think of taking food on a 10km hike, so I didn't think of it myself! I think we met most of the others almost exactly half way around. There was five or ten minutes of sitting around waiting for the last few to get back, nobody asked who had climbed the rock — the two Japanese guys did, not sure who else did or didn't. Then it was back to camp for some much needed lunch! After lunch it was time to visit Kata Tjuta, and walk through the valley of the winds. A large thunderstorm was moving in from the west, and everything was still damp from the morning's rain, so there was little chance of the walk being closed — something that happens when the temperature exceeds 35°C! Sandy looked knowledgably at the clouds and claimed that we'd be all right, that we'd be sheltered by the “domes from the rain if it did arrive, so we headed off up the track...

The wind increased as the storm drew closer, and was further intensified as it funnelled in through the gap between the domes. Heading down from the “1st Lookout” — the point where the walk is closed in hot weather — one of the party was spooked by the thunder and started to head back. Sandy talked him out of it, convincing him that it was only noise and lightning, that there probably wouldn't be any rain, that we should head on... Looking back up the hill from the bottom I was watching as the clouds reached the domes we'd just passed. Boiling in over the hill, the wall of rain came sweeping towards us! Some people struggled into their spray jackets, some (like me) had left theirs in the bus or the camp, Ken decided that the best option was to take off his t-shirt, roll it up and keep it dry in a bag.

The pelting rain only lasted a few minutes, together with wild winds that thrashed the trees around and had us all wondering where we could get shelter, then it had all passed and we were left soaked, but gently steaming! It was an amazing walk from there on, as we watched, the rain started running off the domes in streams and small waterfalls, some only lasted a couple of minutes, some seemed to be draining larger areas and kept going the whole time. Sandy was very excited, it was her sixth visit to Kata-Tjuta and the first time she'd ever seen rain out here, “Look at the waterfalls!” she kept on exclaiming. At the next major intersection in the track Sandy and some of the group turned around, while the rest of us decided to walk around the longer loop and do the full walk. Annoyingly, half-way around we were interrupted by a member of another party who was chatting incessantly on his mobile phone — amazing that it has coverage out here, 20 or more kilometres from Yulara, but incredibly annoying to the rest of us!

It had been bliss the last few days being away from any kind of phone coverage, even Yulara had none until late yesterday evening as they'd been hit by lightning. All of a sudden phones had started bleeting and beeping and then three or four of the group had spent the next hour or so texting or talking to friends and family in Australia and England — so much for backpacking in the 21st century, seems some people are never more than 12 hours from an SMS from mummy and daddy!

Wind, rain, lightning, thunder, rainbows, red rocks, blue sky — an event-filled two hours around Kata-Tjuta... and we'll never know the significance of it all, since the whole area is still part of “men's business” for the Anungu, and not a word of that is told to anyone outside. On the bus trip back to Yulara Sandy suddenly came to a halt for no apparent reason and half-leapt out of the bus “Quick, quick! she cried. We all followed, and amazingly, she'd spotted a Thorny Devil (Moloch horridus) as it was walking across the road. Amazing because we were travelling at about 100km/hr, and it is only about 20cm long! Together with the Frill-necked dragon it's probably Australia's most well known lizard, appearing on postcards and picture books around the world. Quite amazing to see in real life, so much smaller than everyone imagines! Another Uluru sunset tonight, but much more low-key than yesterday's. Jo and I grabbed a couple of beers and walked from the campsite to the nearby lookout, then stood around with half a dozen others and watched quitely as the sky faded to orange and purple. Uluru was nowhere nearly as exciting as yesterday, but the colours on Kata-Tjuta summed up the desert evenings.

Where?

Yulara village

A ridiculously early wake-up call this morning — we had to get up at 4:30 to eat breakfast, pack up, and be in the bus and on our way to Kings Canyon for the walk before it all got too hot. This is one of the good things about going on a tour that someone else organises, if Jo andI were left to ourselves there's no way that we could get up in time to see a sunrise!

There's a steep climb up from the carpark at Kings Canyon, then most of the walk is around the canyon rim admiring the rock formations. Apart from a large busload of students from a Melbourne girls' school it was fairly peaceful, the girls shrieked and squealed and could be heard half-way around the canyon, the rest of the time we met small groups like ourselves. At one point a Euro dashed out from behind some rocks and bounded away over the broken ground — astounding that they never misjudge and plummet into the canyon — or maybe they do!

Stairs and a boardwalk lead down into the canyon, the recent rains meaning that the waterholes and creek are flowing at the moment. A pair of black ducks and their ducklings were swimming about, according to the guides the pair are resident here. One or two members of our group decided to go swimming, the steep sided canyon and little sunlight in here make for very cold water! They were also joined by a dozen or so of the school-girls, with ear-piercing shrieks as they jumped in. Back up to the rim of the canyon and continuing on around, we came to an immense smooth-sided rock-face. According to geologists this huge slab fell away only some 70 years ago — we joked about whether anyone was here at the time, and whether they are now spread very thinly under the rock! The freshly split rock is an almost whitish sandstone, the iron in it oxidises to give the browns and reds when it is exposed to the air.

At one point Sandy stopped and beckoned us over to a gum-tree growing out of the rocks. Kneeling down low, if you press your ear against the trunk you can hear water trickling around down in the rocks — an amazing trick of acoustics considering how dry it is up at the top!

Continuing on around the canyon we eventually came back to the carpark, then back in the bus for another long drive to take us all the way down the Lasseter highway to Yulara. After an hour or so of cruising along the flat roads a bump appeared on the horizon, gradually increasing in size. “Is that Uluru?” came into my head, “Can't possibly be, we're still two or three hours away, and it's completely the wrong shape...” A few more minutes, Sandy quietly grinning to herself in the drivers seat as more and more people murmured and pointed, before she had to give the game away. “Over there on the left is Mount Conner, we'll be stopping at a roadside lookout for lunch and to take photos.”

Several hundred kilometres from anywhere else, Mount Conner and Lake Amadeus rest-stop contained two buses and the two touring cyclists we'd seen yesterday. Still on their way towards Uluru, the distance we cover in an hour, they cover in a day. They didn't look too impressed to be sharing the tables with us. From my memories of cycle touring I think I can understand why; every day the same questions, all the same noisy inquisitiveness, when all you want to do is sit down off the bike and have a relaxing meal. Drive into Yulara and then around and around the campsite. It hadn't struck me until we got here just how many people visit Uluru. Five campgrounds, two dedicated solely to bus tour groups, with permanent parking lots and shelters for each tour company. Drop off the bags, then into Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park for a visit to the information centre and a drive around the rock itself. Wet and glistening after the rain, it is an amazing sight rising up out of the flat landscape.

...

Arriving at the “Sunset viewing carpark” I had no idea it was all so organised! I guess I should have realised from the numbers, there can be up to sixty full-size coachloads of people here at peak times. Everything from minibusses of backpackers with an esky of beer, to busses from the resort with their trestle table of champagne and suit-jacketed waiters! Once you've walked around the viewing area a few times, then up the track along the dunes to get a slightly different angle, and taken a few photographs, there really isn't much to do but stand around and chat and wait for the sun to go down — hoping that the clouds will part and that we'll get to see some of the famous colour changes. I was standing with my back to the rock sipping a beer when all of a sudden the crowd let out a uniform "OOooo!", almost comical in effect. I turned around to see that the setting sun had shone in under the clouds and lit up the rock as though from footlights. Everyone started running around taking photographs, even the park ranger was standing on the back of his truck taking photos, so I guess it must have been a good night!

Where?

Kings Creek station, Kings Canyon, Yulara village

A six o'clock wake-up call, breakfast and packed and waiting for the bus we discovered that the other two girls in the room were also on our tour. Right on time the bus showed at five to seven, then several minutes of confusion because there were meant to be five of us and there were only four — the girls had been travelling with a friend, and all three were booked on the tour, but one had cancelled and gone home to the UK. They'd called the Wayward office and let them know, but obviously the information hadn't made it back to Sandy, the bus driver.

Back around town to Toddies Place so we could all register for the tour, confusion once again over the missing girl. The whole story was explained again as the two remaining English girls registered. Jo and I were next, then followed them outside where one of their mobile phones immediately rang — it was the Wayward head office, trying to locate the missing girl! The staff inside were calling the head office, who were then calling back to her friends standing 3m away to check the story! A bizarre situation as once again the story was repeated, with the Wayward head office having no recollection of the cancellation yesterday! Eventually it was sorted out and all sixteen people got on the bus and ready to go.

A quick stop at the side of the road to pick up the National Parks entry tickets from someone who had raced off to collect these when the office opened — these were meant to be available at Toddies Place, but somebody had forgotten to arrange for them yesterday. Out through Heavitree Gap and south down the Stuart highway, we were meant to visit Rainbow Canyon, but the last few nights' rain had flooded the road — yesterday one of the buses was stuck for three hours. Instead the first stop was at Stuart's Well, approximately 90km from Alice. Here we met Jim Cotterill, a member of the family that first recognised Kings Canyon as a potential tourist destination and started developing it in 1960. We also met Stuart's Wells most famous resident — Dinky the singing dingo.

Since all the other members of the party except Jo had brought their cameras inside, she was “volunteered” to play the piano while Dinky sang. You don't even have to play well, as soon as the keys are pressed, the dingo howls. Play a high note, and the dingo howls high, play a low note and the dingo howls slightly lower. An odd display!

Time to wander around the roadhouse after the show and read the history from the walls' full of brochures and magazine articles, cut out and pasted up over the years. Outside in the campground were camels and kangaroos, and an entreprenurial wildlife rescue service charging five dollars to step into the enclosure and hear about the joeys raised after their mothers became road-kill. Then it was time to get back on the bus for more travelling. The lunch stop was at Mt Ebeneezer roadhouse, a combination roadhoue and aboriginal gallery, painting and souvenirs on display, including wood-carvings in a style that has been “invented in the last twenty years, and didgeridoos that aren't made within a thousand kilometres of the inland area — but they are what the tourists expect! While we were eating two long-distance touring cyclists arrived, tired and dusty and looking for a break. I'm not sure where they were from or where they were going, I've been at the other end of this, and I didn't want to interrupt their break with a lot of pointless sounding questions from “a lazy tourist in a bus.” Hats off to them, but I don't think I could do a self-contained tour here myself — the distances are just too intimidating, a week between Alice and Uluru, over a hundred kilomtres between road-houses, definitely a test of moral and physical stamina. Later in the afternoon we stopped in the bush to walk around in the red earth and to hunt for witchety grubs. Not interested, so Jo and I wandered around in the quiet and looked at the rubbish — here a rusting tin that could be two years old, or it could be fifty, I couldn't tell! The ubiquitous supermarket plastic bag can be seen caught around tree branches near the road, along with blown out tyres and broken glass, ten metres off into the mulga and it could be any decade, only a few rusting pieces of metal giving any hint that people have been here previously.

A second stop later disturbed a little. I'm sure that there are endless mulga trees around, but our instructions to bash down dead trees and gather up wood for the fire tonight seemed vandalistic. It happened a few times during the week, a tension between the promotion of the outback and the unspoilt nature, and an injunction to “rip that down”, “burn this”, probably the quintessential Australian approach — admiring the landscape while digging up and chopping down as much of it as possible. Regardless, we drove off with the roof of the trailer piled high with dead stumps, no more a shelter for lizards, snakes, birds or possums, fuel for the evening's fire. Perhaps the ratio of trees to people out here is enough to support the behaviour, perhaps in a few years there'll be dustbowl for a few hundred metres either side of the road...

Later in the afternoon we arrived at Kings Creek station, a combination working cattle station, campground, roadhouse and tourist park. A surprisingly noisy place, the electricity is supplied by a large diesel generator, and major attractions are the helicopter rides and quad-biking around in the desert! Jo and I opted for a quarter of an hour camel ride, led by Gwen the camel lady — someone I'm sure I've seen at country shows in NSW or Victoria! Only a few hundred metres off into the scrub and it became almost silent, just the creak of the leather harness, the rumbling in the camels' stomachs,and the swish as they rubbed themselves against the vegetation — a rather disconcerting practice! For some reason I like camels, its almost got to be a joke at home with me suggesting we get one for the garden, but I could find the lazy swaying walk quite relaxing. Too soon we were turning around and heading back, back to the noise and the people.

...

After dinner we mostly congregated around the fire where Sandy had us all play a silly — but fairly effective — name game to try and learn each others names. “Hi I'm Sandy and I like sausages...”, “Hi Sandy who likes sausages, I'm Ken and I like koalas....” “Hi Sandy who likes sausages and Ken who likes koalas, I'm Kota who likes kangaroos....” By the time it gets to the sixteenth person naming the preceding fifteen, everyone should have the general idea!

Although we were camping well out in the bush away from city lights, the clouds covered too much of the sky — none of those spectacular desert skies for us tonight! Dave and a couple of the English girls wanted to see the Southern Cross, amusingly it was low on the horizon and hidden below the trees, we had to point in the rough direction and say “It'd be there if the trees weren't there!” Finally to bed, no tents, wrapped only in our swags, and hoping for fine weather!

Where?

Alice Springs 23° 41' 60" S 133° 52' 60' E
Stuarts Well, Kings Creek station

Where?

Adelaide 34° 55' 60S 138° 35' 60E
Alice Springs 23° 41' 60" S 133° 52' 60' E

Where?

Horsham 36° 43' 0" S 142° 11' 60" E
Nhill S 36° 19' 60" E 141° 40' 0"
Bordertown 36° 19' 0" S 140° 46' 0" E
Adelaide 34° 55' 60' S 138° 35' 60' E

Nearly holiday time! Nearly every time it seems to happen, a sudden pile of things to do, a feeling of unreality that I'll actually be able to get away — then finally it arrives with a rush and it is definitely happening now.

Where?

Melbourne, Ballarat, Horsham

This site is getting unwieldy, I'm wondering about a restructure, a rewrite, or a change to one of the myriad of blogging services or CMS systems.... Tried to login to my account on blogger, only to find that I can't remember the password. I know that I have used it in the past, because http://ajft.blogspot.com/ exists, and I updated it on the 23rd of April, 2003. I can't login because I can't remember my password, I can't reset my password because it won't send an email to my existing accounts, I can't write to their support because they seem to insist that I login in order to contact them!

Late update: I think I found a way to break out of the circle and ask them to reset my password.

Tardis like, it has reappeared in Melbourne for a couple of months as part of the Melbourne festival. As always, there are so many potentially interesting bands to go and see! Tonight we made a good start by seeing “Deborah Conway and Friends, or “...and paid acquaintances” as they were introduced. An entertaining set, lots of jokes and chatting with the audience — its the sort of venue that encourages that. Finished off with Man Overboard, after many frantic calls from a couple of women in the audience. “How old is this song,” I wondered out loud... “twenty years?” “Couldn't possibly be,” claimed a friend, “that would make me too old!” Aha! January 1983, The Waiting Room EP, so that's twenty two and a half years ago!

Every year Bicycle Victoria promotes a “Ride to Work Day” in October, and exhorts everyone to ride their bicycles to work, just this once! There's free breakfast in the city, the odd speech, promotional material, police present to engrave your drivers' license number in your bike if you like — to aid recovery in the event of theft.... The last couple of years I've decided to ride in to the city to have a look around, then back out again to go to work. Silly enough when I lived in Richmond and had to then head out to Clayton, downright foolish now that I live in Oakleigh — 15km into the city then 20km back out again!

No photos though, sometime in the past couple of days I've left the camera switched on and flattened the battery, but lots to see, lots of people to talk to. The ride up St Kilda road is an eye-opener, bumper-to-bumper motorists crawling along at 5km/hr, all quite happy to drive in the bike lane, but all equally prepared to lean on the horn when a cyclist pulls out to go around an illegally parked car!

I saw both the Spiegeltent and the box that it comes in! Time for its annual pilgrimage to Melbourne, it appears tardis-like in the forecourt of the Arts centre for a month or so, then silently vanishes overnight.... There's nothing silent about the hammering, clanging and shouting the accompanies the unpacking and setting up though! I'm looking forward to seeing a band or two in there this year.

A warm spring day, a good night's sleep and today its time to go for a ride — but which bike do we use? Jo wanted to get out on her new roadie, I joked about the spider webs on the tandem, yes, no, maybe... The tandem it was.

Beach road was amazing. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of cyclists in groups all up and down the bay. The good weather and the approach of the Around the Bay in a Day ride has driven them all out for their training. Police were out too, whether patrolling for motorists or cyclists breaking the law I don't know, a siren went off directly behind us as they pulled over a speeding motorist and it half deafend us, half frightened us off the bike!

Lunch at Portobella, on the beach in Port Melbourne, just past the end of Kerford road. Not quite sure what to make of it, the food is ok, the service kind of laughable. A well meaning owner running around and handing out menus, but forgetting to tell his waitresses about the new customers, waitresses who all seem to be visiting British backpackers — young, invariably cute, and totally unskilled at waiting. Eventually manage to catch the eye of the waitress, only to find that we'd been given the breakfast menu, and breakfast wasn't being served anymore.... Despite it all we managed to get lunch ordered and delivered and eaten.

First weekend of October means that we've now been in the house for a whole year.... I'm sure there was a list of things that we thought we'd change and fix and do, and I'm equally sure that very few of them have been done! Today's contributions were a visit to the shops for a new outdoor light to replace the decomposing one that finally failed a month ago, and a pile of things for the garden — mulch and potting mix and spring-time plantings of tomatoes and snow peas. This then resulted in lots of fun playing in the dirt.

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