The Red Centre

(Apologies for the change of appearance of this blog  half way through but I have tried everything and cannot correct it  !)

Five hours, two stops, one at a camel farm, where a very photogenic emu

 
tried to eat my camera,

                                                        and one at a cattle station, which was the size of Belgium (!!), honestly, and we were in sight of The Rock...............or so we thought! Actually we were all busy photographing Mt. Connor

 

 

and it was another 100kms before the ‘biggest rock on the planet’ came into view..........or is it the 2^nd biggest?? (Look up the Uluru/Mt Augustus : monolith/monocline debate if you’re interested).

Uluru/Ayers Rock,

                   

uniquely, officially has two names, the first is the ancient aboriginal name, the second, and more widely used, is the name given to it by the surveyor William Gosse, who discovered it in 1873, honouring the Chief Secretary of South Australia, Sir Henry Ayers.

 It is regarded, by aborigines as a most sacred place, in particular to the local Anagu tribe, who own it and the surrounding lands. The aborigines were incredible story tellers and there are tales, known as dreamtime, relating to nearly every hole, scar, cave and gash in the rock, all of which remain visible due to the lack of vegetation growing on its flanks.
It’s stats are ….

·         348 metres (1141 feet) high

·         3.6 km long (2.2 miles)

·         1.9 km wide (1.2 miles)

·         9.4 km or 5.8 miles around the base

·         area 3.33 km² (1.29 miles²)

·         and, it is estimated, it extends several km/miles into the ground (no-one knows exactly how far!)

 

It’s a big old boy, incredibly impressive and, as I walked around it, I thought, it had a strange, almost calming aura about it, which sounds a bit strange for something that, after all is just a rock. This might be something to do with the quiet – you really are hundreds of miles from civilization, apart from the occasional buzz of the sightseeing helicopters overhead, perhaps coupled with the fact that there appeared to be a complete lack of wildlife in the area.

We were told that the water in the area is amongst the most contaminated in Australia!! The explanation opens a contentious issue.

Whilst in the ownership of the local tribe, it is leased back to the Australian government on a long term lease. The government allows anyone to climb the rock and there is even a chain handrail leading to the top. The aborigines ask people to respect the site and not climb, as the site is of great significance to them.
 

 

They liken it to allowing the public to clamber over our important religious and historical monuments.

Despite this, when the weather permits, hundreds still climb it daily. It is a steep climb that usually takes a few hours and, especially in the heat of summer, some people get sick, additionally there are no toilet facilities – can you see where I am going with this? ….. when it rains, all of this human waste is washed off the rock, into the water system surrounding it, it has nowhere else to go … hey presto … chronic pollution = no wildlife.

The rock itself is intriguing and there are pools, overhanging areas which, evidence reveals, were used as shelters, kitchens and meeting places, sheer cliffs that turn into magnificent waterfalls when it rains and rock paintings

                                           

                                           

The rock has one thing that it is most famous for and that is its apparent ability to change colour, notably at sunset and sunrise. Of course it is actually the way that we see the light reflected off the rocks surface that changes, but still it is an impressive display, BUT it depends on the sun/clouds playing their part and we were out of luck but for about 30 seconds when the top of the rock seemed to glow
 

                           
 

 as if it contained an electric bar fire element (ask your mum if you don’t understand this).

Obviously, having just seen the sunset, it was getting dark as we headed off to camp but the fun was just starting. On our way to the rock we had stopped and collected a roof rack full of fallen timber from the side of the road and the first job was to unload this and build a huge campfire.

The camp facilities were very basic, we occupied one of several purpose built areas that consisted of a covered eating area with 10 trestle tables, a truck battery, to which we hooked up 3 pretty dull lamps, a sink with cold water and 8 small tents. There were toilet/shower facilities 400 yards away which were very good, but no lighting anywhere, and in such a remote place it was very dark.

In the near darkness 3 volunteers, and Kate and Mick the tour organizers, mucked in and chopped, sliced, stirred, boiled on the open fire, a pile of food from the cool box in the trailer to present us all with quite a passable pasta and camel Bolognese with garlic bread supper and then it was swag time.

A swag is a rolled, thick canvas sleeping bag which incorporates a thin spongy base into which you put your own sleeping bag. The choice was to put this in a tent or around the camp fire and, as it looked like a reasonable, but a little cloudy night, most of us agreed that the tents were for wimps and we would sleep under the stars (even if we couldn’t see them).

At the cattle station we had had the chance to get some supplies and I had been given a steer (no pun intended!) that the home grown  port was the drop to go for. The very modestly named number (!!)
 

                         
 

proved as good as its word as the embers glowed, the temperature dropped and the dingos began to howl in the distance (which sent two young girls from the Black Forest to seek refuge under canvas      ……..wimps).

T shirt, shirt, fleece and sleeping bag wrapped around a 56 inch chest meant that my swag was snug! No problem for keeping warm but, when I woke at 4.30am and tried to turn skywards, it was as if I had been buried horizontally in concrete. It took about 5 minutes to wriggle enough to employ my ‘Houdini out of the straight jacket’ technique and get the zip down enough to start the rotation procedure. When eventually I did get to turn 45 degrees the rewards were totally disproportionate to my frustrations, as the clouds had disappeared and the view was incredible.

I had seen the stars from the desert in Dubai, from a safari park in Sri Lanka, from the banks of the Meekong in Laos, from a beach in the Catlans National Park in the far south of New Zealand, all pretty remote places, but here WOW!!! There seemed to be twice as many stars packed into the darkness than I had ever seen and the Milky Way looked as if someone had skidded across the heavens on a silver tyre. It was magical but it was all short lived.

In order to catch sunrise over the Olgas, another rocky outcrop not too far from Ayers Rock, we had to leave camp before 6am, so, before 5am it was time to start the pre departure activities of ablutions, breakfast, clean everything, pack everything and with 22 sleepy heads to organize, in total darkness, without waking the rest of the camp site it was challenging …. but successfully achieved.

Nature just wasn’t playing ball again, and sunrise was a non event as the clouds refused to break,
 

so, a little disappointed and bleary eyed we all set off to walk the Olgas or Kata Tjuta as it is properly named. It is part of the same National Park as Uluru but differs from it as here there are some 36 domed ‘heads’ of rock formed by  erosion over millions of years. The 6 mile walk was too much for my poor foot and so I did the first mile and went back to the bus, very slowly, to wait for my mates, but the scenery was terrific, in fact as opposed to the yomping I had plenty of time to look about and really soak in the beauty of this extraordinary landscape.

A DIY sandwich lunch and then it was off again for another 3 ½ hours, including stopping for firewood collection, to our next camp site  which we reached in daylight, which made the whole thing so much easier.

Three things to mention here.

First, in all the places that I have been to so far, in fact I would say in my life, I have never seen so many flies as there were in this area. They were everywhere and had no reservation about trying to get into your mouth when you talked and even seemed to want to get in your eyes!! How do the locals deal with it? Well this is the whole thing about corks on the hat.

Secondly my overriding memory of the countryside is the amount of tree ‘litter’ there is. Tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of trees stand with anything from small branches to huge limbs strewn around their bases. It seems to be irrespective of the type, size even age of tree but it is staggering how often you see this.

Thirdly still no sign of a bloody kangaroo!!

Another triumph in the art of one pot camp fire tucker, as a chickeny, sweet and soury. stewy thing was served up followed by a good old Australian outback favourite, a damper (look it up) and then it was a chance to polish off the port around a roaring fire until the rain got too heavy and we wimped into our tents to our swags.

 

                      

There was a definite theme on this tour which was, make sure everyone has to get up before the sun and the last day was no exception. The maths were easy 1 ½ hour drive, 3 ½ hour walk, 5 hour drive home plus bbq lunch and wc/petrol stop = 12 hours. Leave site at 5am = get home before dark, and that was how it worked.

We were bound for Kings Canyon, another Red Centre attraction. Again my hoof dictated me taking the easy option and I took the canyon floor walk whilst the others climbed up to do the rim walk.
 

 

                                                   

Their views were fab, especially of the sheer canyon walls, but quite honestly I didn’t feel too deprived as the canyon walk was really impressive and I was getting to the stage where I actually wanted to be resting not tackling hundreds of steps.

The rest of the day went well and I made up for not seeing a pesky kangaroo by having a couple of extra kangaroo sausages at the lunchtime bbq, that’ll teach ‘em.

Overall the tour had been great, the well informed and good humoured guides had worked very hard –  all that driving, cooking, organizing of 22 people, most of them German and Swiss and supervision of a trainee tour guide, by Kate (24 years old). I wish I could done a little bit more but I was trying to protect myself from further damage whilst not missing out completely.

Tired,



 

some more than others, we got back to Alice, went out for a couple of pints with a few others that were staying overnight and then headed back to the digs for a good nights sleep before the next phase …… rejoin the Ghan and head south.