The Olgas , Kings Canyon and ………… Mice!

Sunrise at Uluru

Sunrise at Uluru woithout Norb

I t was a little chilly as we awoke in our swags at 5:00am so that we could set off to see Uluru at sunrise. After a quick breakfast we broke camp and headed to our viewing spot, along with about 100 of our closest friends. It seems all the tours and individual wanderers are on the same plan. Some years back the park installed viewing platforms to accommodate all the people who want to experience the pageantry of daybreak at Ayers Rock. One guy climbed on the roof covering the platform with a camera on a tripod so he could get a better photo. When the young girl ranger working for the park asked him to come down, his response was there is no sign saying I can’t climb on the roof. This must be how we get those warnings on products that say don’t trim your hedges with a lawn mower or use the power drill to clean ear wax; I expect there will be a sign next year. The flat desert stretched before us to Uluru and then on beyond to the horizon looking like it went all the way to the sun. From our vantage point the sun slowly started to rise to the left of Ayers Rock; first a sliver of light then turning into a full round ball of fiery yellow fury. I’ve seen a lot of sunrises, but there was something palpably mystical about the sunrise as backdrop to the sacred dome sandstone Uluru.  It is an image I will never forget.

The Olgas

A short 30 minute drive brought us to The Olgas (Western name) or Kata Tjura (Aboriginal name). Kata Tjura means “many heads” and there are 36 domed shaped, sandstone rocks in the area. This area too is sacred to the Aborigines, but unlike Uluru, only men were allowed here. We hiked the full 7.5km “Valley of the Wind” circuit. The trail goes through a valley between two of the largest domed heads. Again because of all the rain, the valley was in full bloom. There was even a pool of water in a

Valley of the Wind

place that doesn’t normally have water because the blue trail markers ran right into the pool and you could see them come out on the other side. I was surprised by the number of birds in the valley. We stopped on the side slope of one dome and looked out across the canyon and valley floor into the entrance of a box canyon. Chris said the men would sit in this spot sharpening their spears; waiting for a kangaroo or other animal to wander into the box canyon. They would then follow them in and have them cornered where they could dispatch them with impunity. He said this taught them patience. They must be the most patient people in the world because it would have taken a long time for an animal to come wandering in; I could never be aborigine. Maybe there were more animals around at that time, Chris also added that Australia has wiped out more species than any other country; 19 at last count. We came up out of the valley and crested a small hill between the domes. It was very windy up there,

Endless Road

hence the name “valley of the Winds” and the view was cool. You could see out the end of the canyon to other domed rocks beyond. The rest of the walk was at ground level around the base of the domes.

After a two hour drive we stopped for firewood and another two hours brought us to our last camp. Along the way we were stopped by a police roadblock for a random alcohol test; they even have a show about them on TV. You have to blow zero; there is no tolerance for drinking while driving. Although that shouldn’t be too hard in this area, beers were $70 a case. Of course we

Price for a case of 30 beer...and that's in Australian dollars!

stopped to view the sunset, the other bookend to a perfect day. Camp was another story. There was a shower with hot water, once you got the fire going under the water tank; and it had three walls with no door. There was a flush toilet, but it too had no door. We used the “Coo-ee” system with these. When approach one would yell “Coo-ee”, if there was no response the facility was yours. However the doors were the least of our worries. When the desert blooms everything multiples because of the increased food supplies; there are more berries, flowers, birds, insects and ……mice! The spinifex mice were everywhere in camp and there were A LOT of them; more than enough to do a long term study. We put our bag on a pallet in the camp kitchen and you could see them run underneath. They were scurrying around our feet as we prepared dinner. As we sat around the fire the mice were there too. One girl sat with her feet up the whole time because a mouse had run across them and one guy slept in the bus because he was so freaked out by them. Funny thing was the mice got in the bus and he didn’t sleep a wink. Those of us who slept outside were fine. Chris had told us once the temperature dropped the mice would go to sleep, and they did.

King's Canyon

Garden of Eden

5:00, time to get up and see another sunrise; beautiful as usual. On our last day we would take the 4 hour hike around the rim of “King’s Canyon”. The canyon is basically “V” shaped. You climb about four hundred steps to the top of the canyon at one side of the wide end and hike along the edge until the canyon narrows. You then descend into the “Garden of Eden”; the valley at the bottom of the

canyon, and up the other side. There are various lookouts along the way where you get a chance to peer over the 300 meter vertical cliff face.
There are no railings and they prefer you don’t get to close because of the instability of the rock; the last major rock fall being about 80 years ago. It’s not the Grand Canyon, but it had a grand beauty all its own.

Look at the disco dancer busting a move

We stopped to barbeque for lunch before beginning our 6 hour ride back to Alice Springs. This is where the ruggedness of our bus would be put to the test; about half that time would be travelling on unsealed (i.e. dirt) road. It was a bone jarring, teeth rattling, wash board of a road, so bumpy and

Put another shrimp on the barbie!

noisy you couldn’t hear yourself think. It was funny for the first ten minutes and after that you just wanted it to end. I don’t know how the bus held together. Chris said this was a good road as it had recently been graded; I’d hate to ride on a bad one. The torture finally ended when we stopped for an ice cold beer at the Glen Helen Resort and to switch buses. Three folks would be continuing on for two more days of camping the rest of us would return to Alice. Since the other bus hadn’t arrived we ordered another round and of course the bus immediately showed up. We finished our beers said goodbye to our fellow travelers and headed in opposite directions. On our way back we could see smoke ahead and as we got nearer there were flames on both sides of

The "good" unsealed road

the road. They were doing some “controlled” bush fires, although there was no one around controlling the fires. It was pretty cool to drive through. We still had about an hour to go when a young guy in the back of the bus requested a toilet stop; the beer was too much for him. I was glad he broke down first because I wasn’t sure I could make it all the way. We were still in the middle of nowhere and the gal driving the bus said there were no toilets until we get back to Alice and there really weren’t any trees either, but she immediately pulled the bus over and said have at it. The men went on one side of the road and one girl went on the other side to have a little

Controlled Fire

privacy. Maybe we should have stopped a little sooner to help control the fire. Peeing on the side of the road, what better way to end a great adventure to the Red Centre of the Australian outback.                  

It’s a ripper.

norb

Uluru is not the communication officer in Star Trek.....................

“The world is like a book, if you stay at home it’s like reading only the first page”

Our "bus" at the Mt. Ebenezer Roadhouse

That is how Marta explained to me her motivation for travelling. She was paraphrasing a poem hanging in her home in the Netherlands. I thought the doggerel a perfect analogy of my odyssey. In addition to Holland, Australia, the UK and Germany were also represented in our merry band of international adventurers. She and her husband were two of the 14 people in our group partaking in a “WayDownUnder” tour to the Red Centre. For 3 days I had the privilege to journey with them over 1500Km, trek some amazing natural terrain, view glorious sunrise and sunsets; and sleep in swags, out in the bush, under a canopy of a million Southern hemisphere stars.

The endless highway

Chris, our tour guide, picked me up at 5:45am from my hotel. The next two days our wake up time was 5:00; you do not do this on a vacation. I jumped into the front seat of our “bus”, a 4-wheel drive, diesel, behemoth that you almost needed a ladder to get into. Later it would become evident why we needed such a rugged vehicle. As we chatted while making the rounds to collect the rest of the troop, I learned two things: 1) Chris was a Packer fan (Australians obviously don’t understand

Mt. Conner - Not Ayers Rock

The cost of beer

American football) 2) There was another Norbert in the group. Here I am thousands of miles from home, halfway around the world, in the middle of the Australian desert (yes I know it’s an arid zone) only to find a Packer fan and a guy named Norbert . In fact, there was another “WayDownUnder” tour paralleling ours that also had a Norbert in their group.  Three Norb’s in the same place……scary. My Norbert was travelling from Germany with his wife, daughter and son Simon. Our group hit the road, stopping twice at cattle stations (ranches) along the way for a leg stretch, toilet break and coffee. Several hours and almost 450 Km later, we saw it, rising like a rusty stone skyscraper from the flat desert scrubland, the giant, red monolith …..…. Ayers Rock!  Nah, Uluru, the aboriginal name for the sacred rock, it was not.

That was Mt. Conner, a tall, rectangular, flat top mesa that cons people into believing it is Ayer’s Rock (the western name for Uluru).  A bloke on the train had told me about this so I knew it was coming and was not disappointed.

A short time later we did see Uluru and the sight was majestic. It’s hard described the feeling on seeing it for the first time. You’ve been staring at a flat wasteland stretching off to the horizon for

Ayers Rock - Uluru

hours, then plopped down right in the middle of it out of nowhere materializes this large, rounded, red-orange lump of sandstone. You can’t believe what you are seeing; it’s almost like a mirage. You have no clue it’s coming. It’s not like there are other rocks nearby or the foothills to some mountain; just flat, flat flat ……. Boom!  the rock. 

The chain

To climb or not to climb is not only a matter of fitness but a question of personal principles. In the past, the majority of visitors would scale Ayers Rock, however in recent years the aboriginal people have requested people not ascend Uluru because historically the site has been sacred to their society. From the first time I had read about Ayers Rock, I knew I wanted to clamber to the top. Sitting next to 15 year old Simon I asked him if was going to climb the rock; his answer was no. All the while we were driving I kept trying to convince him to come along with me; he kept saying no. The recent controversy with the aboriginal people had me questioning my 

Trail Markers

own decision and when we arrived at the base of Ayers Rock and I saw up-close the steepness of the ascent, I was really second guessing my choice; it has to be about a 70 degree incline for the first part of the climb. When we arrived at Uluru Chris asked who was planning to climb and no one raised their hand except me; although I couldn’t tell if their reluctance was due to sensitivity for the aborigines or the challenge of the climb.  We could see some people making their way up and down along the heavy chain anchored in the rock for the beginning of the climb. I tried one more time to persuade Simon to board the big boulder with me. He spoke to his family in German and then his mom said to me that he would like to climb the rock, but he has no way of carrying his water; you really do need both hands to climb and water to stay hydrated. It sounded like a feeble excuse and my backpack was already coming with me, so I said I would carry his water for him. It was agreed and off we went upwards to the summit while the others wound their way around the base walk.  A few meters up the chain I was regretting have been so persistent. It was about 2:00pm and hot, the sun is beating down on us relentlessly from a cloudless sky, the track is very steep, the rock is rounded like a camel’s back, and the path is not that wide on either side chain.  A few missteps could send you careening over the edge or rolling backwards down the mountain; I would have felt terrible had anything happened to Simon.  About midway up the chain there was a red box which we thought marked the half way point. About ¾ of the way up the chain my lungs were on fire and there was another box. When reached the top of the chain, which we originally thought marked the end of our death march, there was another box. We found out later that the boxes contained defibulators; approximately 40 people have died climbing Ayer’s Rock, mostly from heart attacks. That sounded totally understandable to me, by the time we reached the end of the chain I thought I was going to need one. You literally have to pull yourself up the face of

We made it!

the rock using the chain. We stopped several times along the way to catch our breath, mostly because of me, but I know there were times Simon was thankful for the rest. We made it to the end of the chain and thinking we were almost finished quickly scrambled over the next little hump and realized that we still had a long way to go; with white lines marking the path endlessly trailing off in the distance. And the top of the rock not flat, it has crevasses too wide to jump, undulating up and down, slowly rising until you reach the highest point 354 meters above the desert floor. Of course the view was stunning, miles of desert in every direction, the Olgas (a set of sandstone rocks we would head to tomorrow) 60Km to the southwest, mountains in the far distance. This dry, open, landscape was the opposite end of natural beauty from the lush, green, dense rainforest of Western Tasmania. The wind picked up as we made our way back down was blowing pretty hard when we hit the chain. Going down was way easier; I chose to rappel down backwards using the chain, Simon used the seat-of-the-pants method. When we finally reached the bottom we found out they had closed the rock because of the wind. The park rangers will also close it when it rains (rarely) or if it is too hot (often).  It took us 95 minutes to go up and down and although my climb up Mt. Amos was higher and took longer, the climb up Ayers Rock was much harder. Since we still had some time Chris said I could do Kuniya walk, which goes about a third of the way around the base, and meet him and the bus at the water station. It’s amazing how many people go out without any or not enough water. I was sitting alone on a bench at the water station, trying to absorb and comprehend the aboriginal spirit of this site when coming down the path from the other direction was a sextet of young people. Two of them were loudly yapping on cell phones oblivious to this extraordinary setting.  Why I wondered had they come.

Uluru at sunset

We finished the day watching the sunset perform a magical lightshow on the face of Uluru. Red, crimson, orange, purple, violet, lavender; all the colors at that end of the electromagnetic spectrum dance on its’ surface and make it glow like a dying ember. We watched until the light ran out then moved on to our camp to enjoy a warm shower, some “skippy “ (kangaroo)stew an a sweet slumber in our swags. Tomorrow we would tackle The Olgas.

Bob’s your uncle.

norb

Wonder why I landed in Alice……………..

You see a lot of this

“Alice Springs”,” The Alice”, or just plain “Alice”; say any of those to an Aussie and they will know that you’re heading to the outback……….way outback!  Alice Springs is about 900 miles from Adelaide, smack dab in the middle of Australia, surrounded by absolutely nothing. Riding “The Ghan” , the venerated train named after the Afghan camel riders who helped build the railroad north and South across Australia, was something special.  It’s changed a bit since I first dreamed of my journey to the” Red Centre”, as the area around Alice is known. The train no longer runs on the narrow gauge track it once did, although in one spot you can see some of the old track, but the view out the window certainly hasn’t changed; mile upon mile of desert (well technically not a desert but an arid zone), as far as the eye can see, covered with salt bush, spinifex grass and a dozen other desert (arid zone just doesn’t sound as nice) plants I can’t name. I only learned of those two from folks on the train. Surprisingly, as I saw from the “The Ghan” and would observe later as I travelled around the  area, the desert was very green; a sort of gray green, but green none the less, not the rusty dusty reddish brown I had expected. I learned later that the area has had above average, almost record, rainfall for the past 18 months and everything was in bloom.  Since it was a 24 hour train ride from Adelaide to Alice I opted for a single berth instead of a red service seat. As you would expect on a train the room is a compact space, barely 6 feet by 4 feet, with everything, the table, the bed, the sink neatly folding away. When the bed is in the down position you can barely open the door, but it was a comfortable getaway to watch the miles and miles and miles Australian landscape roll by. The train is a throwback to an earlier day when the pace of travel was slower and maybe a little more civilized. Sure I could have flown to Alice in a couple hours, but I’m on an odyssey not a vacation; experience more valuable than time. The car has an undulating hallway hardly shoulder width wide to utilize the space more efficiently. I’m positive trying to pass someone in the hall is not always possible; one time I met a fellow in the middle who literally had to suck in his ample mid-section in order for us to pass. Meals are served in the dining car where you are assigned an early or late service and since the train was full to capacity you

couldn't just sit wherever you wanted. People travelling together were seated together and then the crew filled in the remaining seats with the lone travelers. For dinner I was seated with two blokes and a Sheila from Australia. They were all taking The Ghan through to Darwin. The gal was a nurse on holiday, one gent a vintner on his way to see his son coming in from Singapore, and Tom, an older man, was on a holiday trying to escape for a moment from the pains of his daily life. His family and friends mandated that he take a break, for his wife has Alzheimer’s and he has been dealing with the cruelty of that insidious disease that many of us know from personal experience. He looked tired, resigned and sad. The vintner recounted tales of seeing Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis and Ella Fitzgerald in Vegas back in the 50’s. As I was staring out the window, the sheila said look at all the paddy melons , so I’m looking for the little wallabies I saw in Tasmania, but didn’t see any. The she made a comment about them being yellow and I was totally confused. She was referring to a watermelon-like fruit that grows everywhere in the outback, not the cute pademelons (little wallabies) from Tassie, although both were pronounced the same. The paddy melon is a weed and the fruit is not edible which is a shame because there are a lot of them around. At other meals I met a guy from Oklahoma who now lives in Belgium and works for NATO; a retired couple, cattle farmers from the bush in New South Wales; and the bartender, a gal in her early twenties who has travelled a lot of the world, dove the Great Barrier Reef and has just bought a house.  Houses are expensive in Australia and listening to people talk the situation sounds mighty similar to the state the US was in before the bubble burst. On the way back from dinner I turned the corner of one sleeping car to find an elderly women getting ready for bed, standing half way in the hall and half in her berth, not wearing any pants. It took the two of us by surprise. We both had a laugh and I kept moving on hoping I could get the inage out of my head before I fell asleep. You won’t see that on a plane!

Iron Man Monument

There was not a kangaroo in site all the way to Alice Springs. I saw a lot of cows, and some dead cows, but not a single roo. We passed the “Iron Man Monument”,  the site of the one millionth concrete sleeper starting from Adelaide,  and the dry Finke River before finally arriving in Alice Springs.

Alice is not a wonderland, not the rough and tumble, outlaw, wild-west locale I had envisioned back in the 70’s…….. and it doesn’t even have a spring.  The “spring” is actually a low point in the usually

The Spring



Todd River - This depth guage is not a joke

dry Todd river, where some solid rock underlies the sandy river bed keeping the water from seeping down through.  The Todd river, like the Charles, Finke and other rivers in the area are dry rivers. Most time they are bone dry and only fill for short periods of time when heavy rains fall. The rest of the time the river runs underground supporting the river gums and other vegetation along its banks. Every year the town of Alice holds the Todd river boat race. The boats are like Fred  Flinstone’s car with your feet sticking out the bottom of the boat; you hold up the boat and then run down the sandy river. The race has been cancelled three times because of water in the river!

There’s not much to see or do in Alice Springs; it’s really a jumping off point for other nearby sites like Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kata Tjuta (The Olgas), King’s Canyon and others; and when I say nearby I

mean that in Australian terms, Uluru is about 450 Km from Alice, the Olgas even farther. I took a walk along the Todd River (I could have just as easily walked in the Todd river) to the Telegraph Station just outside of town, about 6km from where I was staying.  The history of the area is fascinating to me.  The station was the midpoint of the Overland Telegraph Line between Adelaide and Darwin.  When the line was opened in the 1870’s it reduced the time it took sending messages from months to hours.  It must have been a lonely, isolated place to live. I took a hike along one of the trails and then walked up ANZAC hill, the highest point in town, to get an overview

Alice from ANZAC hill

of Alice. The hill was on fire the Saturday before I arrived; timing is everything. In the afternoon I stopped in for a digeridoo workshop; there were two if us. Yes, digeridoo is a real word, not one made up to win a trivia game. The word is the name given by Europeans to a musical instrument played by the Aborigines. Later that evening when I went to see the digeridoo show (I told you there wasn’t much to do in Alice), little did I know there was an audience participation part. The show was contemporary dige not traditional and was actually quite entertaining with modern tempos, mood lighting and video. They asked for a volunteer to come up and play the digeridoo and of course no one, including myself, wanted to get on stage. Having attended the workshop I was recognized by the impresario and asked to join the band.  Having heard me play he knew that I can make a decent sound, but I need to learn the art of circular breathing (breathing in while blowing out) so I can make a continuous sounds instead of sound between breaths. People were surprised by my ability, but thankfully other members of the audience were asked to come up and play rhythm with sticks, shakers and bongos so the focus wasn’t totally on me. It was all good fun and gave me a better appreciation for how skillful the dude was with the instrument.

Found my pants

Second Hand Store

The next day I rented a bicycle and drove out to Alice Springs Desert Park about 25km away. Riding along, away from the center of town, it looked a suburb of Phoenix Arizona.  The park was very informative about the plant life of the area, but you could see most of the flora in the park for free just by driving around the area for a few hours. Still I enjoyed my time there except for the fact that I left my pants there. Okay not my whole pants, just the bottom half of the pants leg. It’s  cold in the morning, so I start off with long pants. As the day progresses and it gets warm, you can zip off the pant leg just above the knee and make shorts; it’s a really nice feature. I zipped them, folded them and forgot to put them in my backpack. I didn’t realize it until I got back to the hotel and returned the bike.  Since the bike rental was closed and a taxi was going to cost $40 round trip I thought the legs were lost. Thankful the desk clerk asked me why I needed to go to the park so late since they were closing. I explained the unique situation and after she stopped giggling she came to the rescue by calling a tour bus that was picking up some people at the park and asked if they could pick up my pants legs as well. Disaster averted and an amusing anecdote for the hotel desk clerk.

Tomorrow 5:45am begins my “WayDownUnder” Tour of the Red Centre…………

Crikey!

norb