Outback II--Exploring Uluru

We were back at Ayer's Rock by 6 a.m., in time for sunrise.  My favorite view was of the moon still hanging in the sky, above Uluru, glowing red.  The Olgas, a range of rocks near Uluru, was also spectacular in the early morning light.

 

We spent most of the morning hiking the six miles around Uluru. I couldn't stop photographing it, as each change of shadow and light created a new, memorable scene.  Each shot seemed more iconic than the last.  I decided that Uluru was right out of a Georgia O'Keefe painting.  It was a shape as simple, beautiful, evocative, and elemental as the flowers or cow skulls or adobe churches in O'Keefe's master works. "Uluru is just a red rock.  You've been to Moab.  You've seen it," one of our friends commented, before we traveled to Australia.  That was not my reaction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resting on the six-mile trek around Uluru

 

 

 

One of the controversies surrounding Uluru is the rights of aboriginal people versus the rights of others.  Uluru is a sacred rock to the aborigines, with some areas that are particularly sacred.  There were many signs, next to the most beautiful views, urging tourists not to take photos because the aboriginal religion prohibited taking anything, including pictures, away from those sacred spots.   There were also signs urging tourists not to climb the rock, even on days of no wind.  The day we were there, the winds were high on top of the rock, so no tourists were allowed up there.  Uluru is governed jointly by the Australian government and the aborigines.

During the drive back to Alice Springs, we stopped at Curtin Cattle Station.  It was a cattle ranch with a store, motel, and gas station attached.  The signs for the restaurant advertised that almost all the beef on the menu was now raised at this very station. Burgers cost $18, the type of sticker shock we gradually got used to in Australia (where the Australian dollar is very close in value to the US one). Cattle stations are like mini-towns, isolated in the bush.  They have their own generators, "city" signs, and even zoos (emu pens, at least). Fellow travelers included tour companies taking tourists on bush tours, and individual travelers driving the lonely Stuart Highway.  The motel rooms were made of shipping containers turned on end, with a corrugated metal roof over the top.

 

 

 

 

A road train paused outside, ready to travel north or south to Darwin or Adelaide.

The toilets were labeled "sheilas" and "blokes", a bit of Australia-speak.

We were back in Alice Springs by 3 p.m., with just two or three hours before all the shops and sights closed.  We had many options for spending those few hours--Royal Flying Doctors, School of the Air, Reptile Center, aboriginal art galleries, and a museum for the Old Ghan Trains that followed camels in transporting people across the Outback).

 

 

 I chose the Desert Park.  Dave joined me for the bird show, as a ranger showed the hawks, owls and other birds of the Outback.  Our favorite moment was when a hawk jetted close to the ground, grabbed a bit of meat from the ground in its talons,and soared on. 

 

 

Dave then went to town, while I spent another two hours at the Desert Park.  I wandered through the Nocturnal House, with its lizards and strange little marsupials (rat-like things that grow up in pouches).

 

I walked into aviaries filled with parrots and other strange birds.

 

 

 I lingered with the kangaroos.

 

 

I checked out an exhibit on "sinks," the areas where Australia's streams in the Outback simply disappear into the ground. 

It was spring in Australia, and I marveled at the beauty of the desert, with its wildflowers.

 

 

 

Trust Lonely Planet to find great food, even in Alice Springs.  We enjoyed delicious Thai and Indian cuisine at Hanuman.  We had cheese naan with our pad thai.

 

On Thursday morning, we flew from Alice Springs to Perth.  As Dave and I walked out of the airport and into our little plane, I looked back with regret at the Welcome! sign.  I liked this funky place and wished I was coming instead of going.  We took one last look at iconic Uluru from the plane window.

 

 

Outback I--Driving the Stuart Highway to Uluru

"There's nothing there at all," David exclaimed, as he searched out the plane window for roads, buildings, or rivers as we flew across central Australia.  There was nothing but red dirt.  Finally, David spotted one long road.

 

After landing in Alice Springs, hub of the Outback, we rented a car and headed for Uluru, or Ayer's Rock, some 280 miles away, along that one long road. Michael left us in Melbourne and flew on to Perth.  On our way out of Alice Springs, we passed the Flying Doctor building, where physicians correlate care of thousands of people in the isolated center reaches of Australia.

We then turned onto Stuart Highway, the lonely road running straight through the center of Australia and tying together Adelaide, on the South coast, with Darwin, on the north coast.  We passed dry creeks and measuring sticks to warn motorists of how deep water is on the highway during the infrequent floods.  We also passed a couple of emus grazing by the side of the road.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We stopped at "roadhouses" as we drove towards Uluru.  Typical stock in the small  stores was canned meat and beef pies.  At Erluda Roadhouse, a larger operation, signs advertised "brekky", or breakfast.  The store also sold tongue-in-cheek signs warning of various strange animals crossing the roads (kangaroos, koalas).  They also warned of "road trains," the 18-wheeler trucks pulling two huge vans behind them.  In fact, there was lots of kangaroo road kill on Stuart Highway, but koalas live in the tall eucalyptus trees of southern Australia, rather than the scrub of the Outback.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We paused at a camel farm.  There were camels to ride and camels raised in the pens behind for racing. As the clerk explained, "We also sell them for pets.  You know, a rancher may have a few horses, a burro or two, and a camel."  There was also a typically austere-looking store made of corrugated metal.

 

 

 

The store sold aborigine boomerangs and displayed silver cups won by this camel farm in the yearly Alice Springs camel races.  In the early years of Australian settlement, camels were brought from the Middle East to help build the railraod.

 

 

As we drove on to Uluru, we passed through a raging wildfire on both sides of the road.  When we reported the fire at our hotel, no one seemed concerned.  We learned that wildfires are considered a good thing to remove old growth and provide ash for fertilizer.

We made it to Uluru for the spectacular sunset, in which the rock actually does turn color, from rose to dark red to rust.  We watched with dozens of other tourists, curious to see what was so special about this big rock!

 

 

 

 

After it got dark, we took Michael's suggestion to try a real outback "barbie."  That's a barbecue with a variety of meats--cubes of alligator and bison, and sausages made of kangaroo and emu.