I have been planning this huge Ayers Rock tour for a few
weeks, and along the way I have met many complications from fitting the trip
into our schedules, to taking days off from work, from finding the best tour
that actually will leave on the day we are interested in. I had three tours fully ready to book
and found out that all three did not leave on Tuesdays, the one-day we NEED to
leave on. It finally seemed like
it was coming together as I was reading a prospective tour out loud to Tommy
and out of nowhere I just started laughing when I realized I've put all my time
and effort into planning a tour to look at a rock! A ROCK!!! Now I kind of feel silly, but after all
of the effort, I was expecting big things from this rock, and I have to say, it
was all worth it!
6/9/12 – Adelaide, Australia
Today our next adventure began bright and early at 4am as
we sleepily rolled out of bed and stumbled into a cab to head to the airport
for our 6am flight to Adelaide. It
was a quick and easy flight arriving just in time to have some breakfast at our
hotel before David picked us up for a Deluxe Wine Tasting Tour. We drove an hour and a half out to the
Barossa Valley, the oldest wine region in Australia. It was a totally different experience seeing the vineyards
in the winter because with the absence of lush green vegetation, it creates a
backdrop of browns and yellows, with vines that look bare and ominous with the
lack of leaves. As neat as this
was to see, I found it quite ugly and definitely prefer seeing the beautiful
wine regions in the spring or summer!
A few vines still had their fall leaves colored in beautiful reds and
oranges, trying out fight off the cold front chilling me to the bone!
The first vineyard we stopped at was
Wolf Bass. This was definitely not
what we were expecting for our tour, a bus filled with 21 people, three of
which were under the age of 10, visiting a commercial winery rather than our
preferred small tours to boutique small wineries, but we were ready to make the
best of it. Luckily things got
better as the day went on, and this was not because of the increasing levels of
wine in our bodies… Our next stop was
the fabulous Maggie Beers. Now I
was sure we were about to pull up to a brewery, but it turned out that Beers
was actually just the woman’s last name, and it ended up being an adorable
restaurant/winery/fresh produce store.
It felt like we had stepped into a page in a magazine with the quaint
setting and farmers market feel.
For lunch we stopped at the Barossa Valley Wine Co., and although the
wine was not great, the lunch was fantastic. Tommy and I split a delicious tasting platter filled with
local meats and cheeses, filling our stomachs up to survive through the next two
wineries. The last two estates
were both gorgeous with beautiful wines.
At Long Mile we saw the oldest Shiraz vines in the world and took a tour
in the barn where all the oak barrels were kept holding the wines. The wine made with the oldest vines was
called The Freedom 1843, and was not available to taste because it costs $100
per bottle, but the man who gave us the tour took a liking to us and snuck open
a bottle for us to taste! It was
amazing, probably one of the best wines I have ever tasted and really neat to taste
a wine made from the oldest Shiraz vines in the world. The last stop was Chateau Tanundra
where we tried the delicious wines on a beautiful long oak table to finish off
a great day. We will not have a
hard time falling asleep tonight…
6/10/12 – The Ghan
Today was quite the adventure! I must admit there were a few tears shed, some
hyperventilation, and a lot of panic followed, THANK GOSH, by a huge sense of
relief. The Ghan is the train line
that runs up the center of Australia from Adelaide to Darwin with a stop
halfway at Alice Springs. We
decided to take the train up to Alice Springs so we could journey through the
outback and be able to say we have really seen the nothingness in the center of
Australia. Our next destination
for our trip was to go see Uluru (Ayers Rock), so we figured The Ghan would be
the perfect adventure to get us there.
Well adventure it was…
The Ghan was scheduled to leave Adelaide Parklands
Terminal at 12:20pm, but the train would be locked up ready to go at least 10
minutes prior to departure. Well at
12:20pm we were sprinting down the platform hoping to board the train. Thank gosh they let us on, but we cut
it WAY too close. After failing to
get a cab from our hotel, we decided to take the tram down through the city to
get us closer to the train station and call a cab from there. Well the cab did not show up, and time
was really ticking, so we had to make a quick decision and start making our way
on foot. That meant
sprinting. Yes, we ran as fast as
we could with our bags and recently purchased bottles of wine through the park
towards the station. It seemed
impossible to make it so I started crying and freaking out as I continued to
sprint in my UGGS. Well our savior
saw us running down the street in his handicap cab, and told us to hop in his car
for the last stretch free of charge, dropping us off JUST in time to make the
train. This could have been a
disaster, but instead it now is just a crazy story…THANK GOSH!
We sat in the Red Service, which is the cheapest ticket at
the very back at the train. This
meant we got to sit in the old chairs with a bunch of other people surrounding
us, instead of being in a luxurious cabin up front with sitting rooms and
restaurants. We also got to
recline these chairs and sleep in them…lucky us. Nothing like sleeping sitting up with 50 other people
snoring around you. Needless to
say we did not sleep.
6/11/12 – The Ghan to Alice Springs
We made the best of the situation by spending the majority
of our time in the small section between the sleeper chairs and the café; this
area got a bit of fresh air and had nice clear windows to look out
through. We ended up standing at
these windows for almost 5 hours straight watching the dessert speed on by. We saw wild horses and cows, one dead
camel and one dead kangaroo, besides that all we saw was red dirt and dry green
bush. The usually completely red
dessert was actually quite green from the past 2 years of heavy rain following
10 years of drought. This also
meant that the animals did not need to come close to the tracks to find food
and water, except the few that we felt thump under the train in the middle of
the night…Breakfast? We crossed
over the border from South Australia to the Northern Territory early on as we
made our way to Alice Springs.
We were more than ready to get off the train as we pulled
into Alice Springs, but we were also warned of the small and dangerous
town. Because of this, we decided
to stay out of town at the Dessert Palms Resort on the other side of the dried
up Todd River. We enjoyed
the view of the MacDonnell Ranges from our hotel room, but decided to stay on
the property and order in dinner just to be safe as the sun started
setting. We were most excited to
be sleeping in a bed and I happily passed out by 9pm!
6/12/12 – The Rock Tour: Kings Canyon
We got picked up at 6am this morning for a three-day tour
to Watarrka (Kings Canyon), Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) and Uluru (Ayers Rock). We went with The Rock Tour on a mini
bus of 22 people including our driver/cook/guide, Cooper. Today we drove 720km, or 435mi, which
was long, hot and uncomfortable.
We later found out that Cooper intentionally left the air conditioning
off to help our bodies adjust to the heat before taking us on our first of many
long walks. Once we saw Kings
Canyon, it was definitely worth a sticky car ride! Kings Canyon is known as the Grand Canyon of Australia, but
as our guide informed us, the Grand Canyon is actually a gorge rather than a
canyon, so Kings Canyon is the most spectacular canyon in the world. Kings Canyon had walls over 100 meters
high of the most brilliant red formations. We climbed up the “heart-attack hill” to the 6km rim walk,
which traced the top of the canyon.
It is called heart attack or heartbreak hill because of the incredible
steepness causing people to have heart attacks at the top when it is extremely
hot outside. I was panting by the
time I had made it to the top, and we had a lovely day of only 70 degrees. Halfway through the rim walk, we came
across a gap in the canyon that descended to the Garden of Eden, which is a
permanent waterhole, too cold for us to swim in during this time of the
year. Along the walk, Cooper
stopped to show us different plants that were used for the indigenous people as
medicines, and pointed out different geological formations. We saw the ripple marks fossilized on a
part of the rock that used to be under water, and rubbed a mixture under our
nose made from a part of a plant mixed with water that smelled and worked just
like Vics cold medicine, clearing up our sinuses right away. One plant jutting out of the rock
smelled strongly of mint and was called Rock Mint. This was known as the kangaroo’s sleeping pill so we decided
not to try any. It was really neat
learning about how the indigenous people lived, and still live, right off the
land. I say indigenous rather than
aboriginal because our guide Cooper spent a few years working with an
indigenous group and told us that it is actually offensive to call them aboriginal. The views were truly spectacular, and
the vibrant red color of the sandstone rock only added to the beauty. The red color comes from iron
oxidizing, as the inner geologist in me explained to Tommy. It took us three hours to do the rim
walk while stopping often to snap lots of pictures. We piled back into the car after to head to our campsite on
our way to Uluru!
We had another long drive to our campsite, but stopped on
the way to collect our firewood for the next few days. I do not mean we stopped at a store to
pick up some firewood, but instead we were dropped off on the side of the road
to wander into the bush and find enough firewood to lest us for three
days. We had to collect pieces
that were over seven feet long and thicker than our arm in diameter. This meant breaking down limbs off
burnt trees and lugging them to the car with the help of 2 or 3 people. Tommy and I were awesome at this job,
but were covered in soot, dirt and cuts by the time we were finished. It took us an hour to gather enough
before we continued driving to our campsite as the sunset in brilliant colors
over the dessert. To paint you a
picture of the amazing sunset in the outback, imagine taking colors of red,
yellow, pink, orange and blue, and splashing them all over a dark blue
canvas. It was incredible.
On the way to the campsite we had one more important pit
stop at Curtain Springs, and that was for beers. This was our last glimpse of civilization and by
civilization I mean a campsite with bathrooms and a general store, before we
would be alone out in the bush, so of course we had to stock up on beer! We all pitched in to buy a few cases
before we headed back out into the night.
As we finally pulled off the highway onto a dirt road, the pitch-black
bus and surrounding were suddenly filled with bright flashing colors and the
silence was broken by music blasting.
Cooper had slyly ripped the sheet off a hidden disco ball and pressed
play on a 80s soundtrack to have a disco party in the middle of the dessert on
the bus before it was time to rough it in the outback. This pumped us up just enough to set up
camp and make our fire. Cooper had
told us that we would be making a 12-foot fire tonight, but none of us truly believed
it would ACTUALLY be that big, but sure enough it was. I have never seen such a huge fire,
burning down all of our hard collecting work, and honestly Tommy and I thought
it was such a waste to use so many of the logs. Well we were wrong because all of the burnt down wood chips
were actually used as hot coals to cook our dinner on, so I’d say it was not a
waste if that meant I got to feed my rumbling belly. Dinner was nothing special, just a bunch of beans, rice and
veggies, and unfortunately I do not like beans and did not really want the
people sleeping next to me loading up on the “magical fruit” before bed time if
you know what I mean… One couple
had bought a bag of marshmallows at our stop in Curtain Springs, so we passed
them around, found a stick on the ground, and all roasted our marshmallows over
the simmering wood chips/embers.
The sky began to slowly fill up with starts dotting the entire sky until
I could barely see the darkness in between. I felt like I was sleeping under a sky draped with white
Christmas lights. It was
magical. As I said before, we were
sleeping in the bush in the middle of nowhere, so we set up our swags and
sleeping bags in a circle around the fire with the brilliant sky as our
ceiling. A swag is basically a
huge sleeping bag with a thing mattress built into the bottom to provide a
little cushion, and you sleep in your sleeping bag in the swag for extra warmth
in the cold winter months. We
actually lucked out with the weather being 10 degrees warmer than usual, so we
were extra toasty in our swags and did not even need to bundle up in our
beanies and scarves. So we all
slid into our sleeping bags and zipped up our swags for a good night of sleep
in the middle of the outback. I
hope a dingo doesn’t visit in the middle of the night…
6/13/12 – The Rock Tour: Kata Tjuta and Uluru
I must admit that I slept pretty darn well last night all
bundled up in my swag, and luckily it is too cold at this time of the year for
any bugs, snakes or animals, so I was happy not to receive any unwelcomed
visitors. We were woken up at
5:30am to pack up, have a quick breaky, and hit the road for Uluru and Kata
Tjuta. On our way to the Rock,
Cooper told us a story about the campsite we had just stayed at, and I was
happy to be hearing it today rather than last night! He said that the area we stayed at is often visited by the
Shadow People, which basically means the indigenous ghost spirits…creepy! He has seen plenty himself, and has had
people on previous tours see them as well. One girl woke up in the morning and said to him, “So
aboriginal people still wander around out here in their traditional clothes,”
which he found to be a weird statement, and she went on, “I saw an indigenous
man last night in a loin cloth warming his hands by our fire.” Well Cooper knew there were 1) no
indigenous people in the area, and 2) indigenous people had not been wearing
old traditional dress for quite some time now…YIKES! I am glad I did not wake up to see the Shadow People coming
in for a snuggle in my swag.
We passed out for the rest of the drive, and woke up just
in time to see our first view of The Rock! It was really exciting to finally see what we had come here
for! We were all filthy, smelly
and desperate for a shower, so it was music to my ears when Cooper told us he
was going to stop at some showers to left us clean off real quick before we
started a full packed day of hiking, learning and LOTS of picture taking.
The excitement heightened as we pulled up to the park
entry station and could see the huge red monolith towering over the dessert
floor. Off to the left we could
see Uluru and to the right we could see the many rounded peaks of Kata
Tjuta. We received our park passes
and headed into the national park.
Uluru and Kata Tjuta are on Anangu land, an indigenous
tribe in the area who have been using these sites for cultural ceremonies and
the telling of their history/creation story for tens of thousands of
years. When white people realized
that Uluru could be used as a tourist site, the land was taken from the
indigenous people. In 1958 Uluru
and Kata Tjuta were taken from the Anangu and established as a National
Park. After many years of fighting
to get their land back, the Anangu were finally granted ownership of the
National Park on October 26 1985, but only under an agreement that the land
would be leased back to the Federal Government for the next 99 years. This does not seem fair because it is
not fair, but it is what is in practice today. The park is listed as a world heritage site as well as a
significant cultural site.
We started today at Kata Tjuta, or the Olgas, which are a
group of large domed rock formations all composed of conglomerate. The geology geek inside me allowed me
to explain to Tommy that a conglomerate is a sedimentary rock made up of many
different types of large and small cobbles and boulders held together by
sandstone. This creates a really
neat looking rock, and in the magnitude we saw it on these 36 towering domes,
it was truly spectacular. Kata
Tjuta is a men’s cultural site, meaning that in their culture, women are not
even allowed to ever look at this area.
If women in the society were to look, there would be very harsh
consequences such as being stabbed with a spear in the head to leave a scar
symbolizing you as an outcast.
That being said, I was not punished in this manner for looking because
as I am not a part of their society and do not know all of their cultural
practices, I am actually not considered a woman but only a child to them. Men’s and women’s sites were
established to keep the men’s and women’s roles in society separate therefore
creating an egalitarian society.
Men hunt and women gather, creating two specific roles that are equally
important for a society to thrive and survive establishing a sense of
equality. Therefore, women cannot
look at a men’s site where they do their hunting and men may not look at a
women’s site where they do their gathering. Children can look at both because they have not yet learned
their roles in the community, and as I said before, I am a child because I also
do not know their cultural practices.
Before Cooper sent us off to do the Valley of the Winds
walk, he sat us down in the valley to tell us an indigenous creation story of
how this area of Australia was created.
Two brothers decided one day that they wanted to build the biggest sandcastle
they could, so they piled as much dirt as possible into a huge mound. They then decided that the sandcastle
should be perfectly smooth, so they picked out all the rocks and small bits
creating one smooth, perfect sandcastle.
This is Uluru, one huge smooth sandstone rock. As they were removing the rocks and small bits out of the
sandcastle to create this perfect mound, they threw all the rocks behind them
creating many mounds. This created
Kata Tjuta, a conglomerate formation of many mounds. One day, one of the brothers got very sick and was dying, so
the other brother wanted to make him as comfortable as possible and patted down
the smooth sand into a bed. This
created Mt. Conner, which Tommy and I saw from the plane leaving Ayers
Rock. To us these are just stories
but to the Anangu people, this is the true creation story of the land. The landscape is their Bible, and
different formations and sites are different pages of the book. Cooper drew this all on the sand as he
was telling us the story, building the different formations, and then used us
to demonstrate Kata Tjuta as a conglomerate with some girls and boy son a
table, and used all girls on the other table to demonstrate Uluru as all
sandstone. It was really neat
hearing the stories and interacting to help us understand.
The Valley of the Winds walk was a 7.4km walk that entered
into Kata Tjuta, surrounding us with the massive red domes. The walk ended climbing up a small dome
connected in between two massive domes, giving us the most amazing lookout over
the entire valley behind us framed between the two brilliant red conglomerate
formations. It was an hour-long
walk of the most amazing views and colors on a red dirt path with a tough set
of natural stairs to climb up at the end. The hike was so rewarding as we turned around and saw the
entire valley floor between the two red domes stretching out to the
horizon. I understand where the
walk gets it’s name from because I was nearly blown off the hill from the wind
howling through the valley in this narrow wind channel, whipping me in every
which way.
Cooper met us at the top of this lookout, and on the way down
the other side, he stopped us a couple of times to teach us about some of the
plants and cultural spots. We
learned about a bush with needles that can be stuck into the skin to heal
warts, a tree that’s bark is used to make bowls and the sap is used as stitches
that brings the skin together (the indigenous people learned this from watching
kangaroos after fights rub it on their faces), a white gum tree’s powder used as
sunscreen and as a source of water (you can always can find water at the base
of a white gum tree if you dig down below the roots), and we visited a spot
where we could see the markings on the rock of where indigenous men used to
sharpen their spears while they watched the boys learn to hunt kangaroos in a
small enclosed area. This was a
men’s site, not because of the penis shaped dome, but because it was used for
their hunting practices. These
were all really neat ways to survive off the land that the indigenous people
used to practice, and actually still use some of these resources today.
We stopped for lunch after this long walk to refuel or
bodies before heading over to THE ROCK!
We started at the cultural center to learn more about the
history of the Anangu people and what these sacred sites mean to them. There was a book of apology letters
from people who had taken rocks from the park, and in return had really bad luck
after leaving. Now Tommy and I did
not realize that this was such a bad thing, and had actually collected a few
rocks from the places we had visited for our collection of rocks from all
around the world. After reading
this book of apologies and hearing the terrible stories of bad luck struck upon
people who took the rocks, we felt really guilty about taking these rocks, and
happily threw them all back as soon as we returned to the bus! We actually were late back to the bus
because we found an art gallery in the cultural center with all of the
aboriginal paintings with their cultural symbols and stories told through the
art. We absolutely love these
paintings and have wanted to buy some, so we bought one that reminded us of
sunrise and sunset colors over Uluru that ended up being a painting that
signified a women’s ceremony at a specific point that we ended up seeing at
Uluru. It is really amazing to
have a painting that is so significant to us, and what we had seen on this
trip; the two of us could have spent hours looking at the beautiful
paintings.
Finally the moment we had been waiting for, we were at
Uluru! Before starting the walk we
learned about why it is so terrible and controversial to climb. Besides the fact that it is extremely
dangerous and many people have actually died trying to climb it, it is also
greatly offensive to the indigenous people of this area. The particular area where the stairs
were put is actually right over a story page of the Mala people’s Bible. As I said earlier, the land is their
story, their Bible, so this would be the same as if someone just took out a
part of the Bible and rewrote it in their own way. This page to them now has changed to have to incorporate
Western influence and a completely different story. Every day people are walking right over their creation
story. That being said, there was
no way Tommy and I would even think of climbing the rock. Now the entire rock is not a cultural
site, just specific areas of the rock that tell the story, so there were areas
where we could take pictures, touch the monolith and actually walk on it. Luckily the climb was closed for the
day because of strong winds, so the cultural significance was not ruined for me
having to watch people disrespect another cultures traditions.
We did a part of the base walk with Cooper as he showed us
important cultural sites and told us stories by drawing in the red dirt using
indigenous symbols. This was
really neat. He sat down in the
sand in an area that the indigenous people used to use as a kitchen and started
to talk and draw simultaneously, creating an indigenous story while helping us
learn about the different symbols indigenous people use to tell stories when
they paint. There was the story of
the dingo symbolized by a huge looking dingo paw in the rock next to four
protruding boy like shapes. The
story was that four young indigenous boys were out on their walkabout, and were
finally coming home as men after 2 years of surviving on their own in the bush.
To celebrate their return, a huge
party was put on. The tribe asked
another tribe to come celebrate with them, but they had to say no because it
was against tradition to show up after a celebration had already started. Some of the men were so offended that
the other group did not come, so they cursed the other tribe as they talked
harshly while standing around the fire.
This created a black magic that turned the fire into a huge dingo like
creature that ripped through the sand and ended up killing the entire
tribe. The four boys never got
their celebration so they were forever stuck trying to find their way home, and
therefore frozen into the rock because they would never be able to get back
home.
There was a story of a man who stole another hunters shot
Emu. He lied about stealing his
kill, and when the man cooked the Emu on the fire that night on top of Uluru,
he lost his balance and rolled through the fire and all the way down the rock,
leaving his burnt skin as a trail down the rock where he slid. This is on a part of the rock where
moss grows year round, and looks like burnt of skin on the side of the
rock.
There are many stories like this all of which make up the
indigenous creation and values in their culture. Of course the dingo story would teach one never to talk
badly about other people, and the emu story would teach children never to
steal, and to indigenous people, these stories are all real.
We went out to a point in the distance to watch the sunset
over the rock, and got a great table to sit and have dinner and beers as the
sunset, changing the colors of the rock every few minutes. Just as the sun went down the rock
became a deep, beautiful red color, and they sky was taking on hues of pink
behind. It was quite the site to
see.
Before heading to our campsite for the night we had a big
dance party on the bus, cracked open a few more beers, and enjoyed the infamous
disco balls flashing lights. We
stayed at an actual campsite tonight with a bathroom rather than using the dirt
as a toilet and a leaf as toilet paper.
6/14/12 – The Rock Tour: Uluru
We woke up bright and early to watch the sunrise at the
same place we watched sunset.
Sunrise was even more spectacular than sunset. When we arrived at the lookout point, we could only see the
dark silhouette of Uluru, which slowly came into view with the color slowly
heightening as the sun started to rise.
It was spectacular. Tommy
and I wandered away from the group to get some pictures from different angles,
and ended up finding a point where we could see Kata Tjuta in the distance,
allowing us to watch the sunrise over both of these amazing formations. We headed to the rock to do the entire
base walk as the last part of our tour.
Honestly, there is only so many times you can stare at a rock, and we
were not very keen to walk a big chunk of what we had done the day before, so
after the group headed off, we slyly stayed behind and had Cooper drop us off
at the only part we had not seen for a quick 45 minute walk before sneaking
over to the cultural center to look at more of the aboriginal art. We had enough time to find one more
great one that we thought looked like the sandstone texture over Uluru or the
conglomerate rocks that made up Kata-Tjuta, but really meant fertility with a
bunch of frog eggs represented… To
us it means something different haha!
It was the perfect way to end our tour, and we got dropped off at the
airport after to head back to Melbourne.
Our final views of Uluru, Kata Tjuta, Mt. Conner, and the beautiful
landscape in the middle of Australia were from the window out the plane as we
took it all in and said goodbye to an amazing trip.
