Tuesday 27 April 2010

Alice Springs and Uluru

The Ghan up to Alice Springs was nice but quiet. I ended up sitting next to a German guy called Frederik who comes from Detmold, Germany. It's a small world. We arrived in Alice at 3pm and it was only a 5min walk to my hostel from the train station, but it was very very hot! After checking in and chilling in the wonderful air con I ventured out to the supermarket for food and got a slight culture shock as Alice Springs probably has one of the highest populations of Aboriginal people in Australia. It was... different. I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing by the pool in the hostel and then having a minor drama with a bug in the shower. Luckily no spiders!

The next day I'd booked myself onto a one day tour to Uluru. I'd been planning on sort of finding my own way there, but though Alice Springs is the closest town to Uluru the rock is actually 500km away! My tour was "Emu Run" and was one of the best tours I've done. Scotty and Nick were our guides and they were both incredibly knowledgeable, enthusiastic and very funny, calling us all 'possoms' and 'vegemites'. I was picked up from my hostel at 6am to be transfered to the main bus. And guess who was on it? Frederik from The Ghan! Very funny. We were given breakfast and I dozed most of the way to Uluru but when I was awake I kept my eyes peeled for roos (as there's meant to be about 40 million of them in Oz) and saw... none. None at all. And the Red Centre was green as they've had so much rain there recently! Typical; I go to one of the driest places on earth just after they've had a record-breaking amount of rainfall - 300ml since January and until then a record year had been 250ml! Ah well.

We arrived at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park around 12pm and, after a quick toilet break at Yulara (Ayre's Rock Resort - the only place nearby to stay and so is incredibly expensive), we headed to Kata Tjuta, known in English as The Olgas. En route we were given our lunch and then went for a walk down the Windy Gorge, which was very pretty and had a stream with some tadpoles in it. From there we drove to the Cultural Centre, with a brief stop to look at some camels that were wandering around happily. Australia has the largest population of wild camels in the world - about 1 million of them. They have become a bit of a pest. But the farmers like them because they eat a plant which is a natural antibiotic (hence why they're so healthy) and then they drink from the same water as the cattle and so pass on the protection. The cattle here are very healthy and also free range! Scotty told us there were two types of cattle in the Outback: the Australian and the Scottish. It's very easy to tell the difference he said, "The Scottish cow has a pair of bagpipes between its back legs while the Australian one has a didgeridoo hanging down from its stomach"... Yes yes, very funny.

The Cultural Centre was nice to walk around as it told a lot of the Aboriginal 'dream time' (or 'creation') stories of the area, such as the one about Kuniya and Liru (python and poisonous snake) and of the Mala tribe. All of them are stories the Anangu (Aboriginals) tell to their children as they don't consider foreigners 'mature' enough to be told the true ones. From the Cultural Centre we drove to the base of Uluru and Scotty took us on the first of two short walks to see some of the areas mentioned in the dream time stories. There were areas along the trail that we could not enter or photograph because they are sacred to the Anangu. But we did see some wall paintings and a waterhole. It's one of the reasons Uluru (which means "meeting place") is so special to the Anangu - because in the desert it's one of the few places they could be almost guaranteed to find water. One the way to the last viewpoint, Scotty stopped the bus so he could grab a thorny devil (lizard) from the road and show it to us all. It was very spiky! Our final stop was for a BBQ complete with champagne while we watched the sunset at Uluru. The sun actually sets behind us so what we were watching was the colour change on the rock - from orangey red, to pink, to purple. It was beautiful and we had a perfect evening for it too. No clouds just clear sky. In fact, the whole day had been lovely: sunny and 36 degrees! Once the sun set we all piled onto the coach and set off for Alice. I didn't get back to my hostel until 12.30am but it was worth it!

I had a full day in Alice the next day and as my attempt at a lie-in failed I ended up wandering around the town. First stop was to climb Anzac Hill to have a look at the war memorial and get some good views of the countryside. It was so hot and the path I took to get up there didn't look as if many people used it. There were grasshoppers everywhere, hundreds that kept flying up at me every time I moved and I was scared a snake would jump out at me. It looked like the right area for them and I was only wearing my 'thongs' (flip flops to all us normal people). But I saw nothing and survived the walk up and back down. I found the main street in Alice after that and had a look around some of the shops. It was a little strange walking around as there were groups of Aboriginals sitting everywhere and they were a little intimidating as they'd stare at you as you walked passed. But I smiled at them and they smiled back so I never felt threatened. Just don't try and get into a conversation about them with a white Aussie... Well, some white Aussies anyway. Eventually I was too hot and tired to do much else and escaped back to my lovely air conditioned hostel to eat and pack for the train back down to Adelaide the next morning.

I had enough time the next morning to run to the supermarket and get some supplies for the train (I've learnt my lesson with train food. It may seem fairly cheap but you don't get nearly enough for a meal!) before walking to the station. I was determined not to be late this time so I arrived an hour and a half early! But most other people had the same idea so the station was pretty packed. I was next to a window this time and as the train was fairly empty I ended up with two seats to myself - and a nutter sitting behind me! His name was Joel and he was a street magician from Sydney. He said hello from somewhere behind my head and then came and sat next to me to chat and I couldn't get rid of him! I confess in the end he just got one-word answers from me and as soon as he got up I spread my stuff over the seat to prevent a return. I wasn't the only one though. I think he was definitely a few sandwiches short of a picnic and was a little distracting at night because he kept talking to himself! Seriously! Very odd. We finally arrived back in Adelaide that afternoon and when I got back to my hostel the owner gave me a free nights accommodation because of the time I stayed there before (they do a 'stay 6 nights get the 7th free' but I thought it all had to be in one go. Not this one). I was in the same room and the same bed as before and bumped into the Irish guys pretty much as soon as I got off the bus.

That evening two of the Irish guys and I went to our first Aussie Rules match at the Richmond Oval - the North Adelaide "Roosters" vs. the West Adelaide "Bloods". It was South Australian league game rather than an AFL match but even so there was about four thousand people there. The game wasn't very close (80 to 20 or something like that - the Bloods won by a huge margin which was good as we were apparently supporting them that night. According to one of the Irish guys workmates anyway.) and I couldn't figure out what was happening in the middle of the pitch but I did get my head around scoring pretty easily. During the quarter breaks everyone could go down onto the pitch and have a kick around or listen in to the team talks which was very strange but a good laugh. The next day saw me and the Kiwi guy go on a disastrous hunt for an Australian SIM card for my mobile. Having spent ages looking I finally found a really good one only to discover my phone was locked. Typical. Knew I should have checked it before I left. Never mind. That afternoon we watched the Melbourne F1 qualifiers and sat out the back with a couple of beers. I had a go at Hurling (yep, the Irish game. The guys have a couple of hurls over with them so we had a 'puck around'. Thank you Niamh for teaching me so I didn't make a complete fool out of myself!) and then we went to watch the football in a sports bar - at 2am because it was live. I'd forgotten my ID and was wearing two things forbidden on the bars dress code but the bouncer still let me in to the disbelief of the guys! When the games ended we left, mostly because the English guy that was with us was too drunk to walk properly! Getting him back to the hostel was quite amusing. As a result everyone had a nice quiet day the next day. We watched the Grand Prix and then went to an Indian restaurant in the evening which was lovely. But I got an early night because I was off on another train journey in the morning. Woo, more trains!

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