Alice Springs, Uluru, Katherine, Darwin, Kakadu
With research and some personal stories we were fairly scared of trying to travel and drive in the Outback ourselves, so we joined an 8 day G Adventures tour. We started by travelling into Alice Springs. It was unlike any town we have visited so far! Not sure how to politically correctly describe it, so I will leave it at that. For the most part, cities and towns we have been visiting really remind us of Canada, just better because there are palm trees. So, I have been really searching for "Australia", you know, snakes, crocodiles, billabongs, sand, crikey, mate and knives!! I did watch Crocodile Dundee before we left. Finally, this is where we found it.
We didn't do too much in Alice as I was still hobbling on my crutches. Unfortunately being on the crutches meant that I missed most of the major long hikes on this trip, pretty disappointing.
The first day of the G Adventures tour took us right to Uluru. I have been looking forward to seeing this giant hunk of rock since we started booking the trip. It didn't disappoint, it was a huge hunk of rock. We finally heard some Aboriginal lore and learned the very basic "children's stories", as an Aboriginal person grows up they gradually learn more details. Most people on our tour walked half or all of the way around the rock, about 9 km in all. My very nice tour guide drove me around the whole thing. One interesting thing about the rock is that it represents so much of the mythology for the group who lives in this area, so many of their stories are in the rock and certain parts of their stories can't be shared with someone not initiated in the level of their religion. Also, their stories are transmitted and are told to visitors only if they visit the land that the story originates. So, there are many signs around the perimeter requesting you not to take pictures of certain parts of the rock, because that story can't be transmitted and told elsewhere away from the land. I found it very interesting!
After the trip to the rock our bus took us out to a parking lot where we got to watch the sun set change the colour of Uluru. The sun set behind us, while we were facing the rock and it was really wonderful to watch the rock change from brown to red to purple. Very magical. Also it was accompanied by crackers, cheese and champagne, very special.
From sunset we drove out to our campsite and spent our first night sleeping out in a swag under the stars. There are so many stars!! The ones that I can recognize from our own skies are upside down.
We were up early the next morning to drive out to a lookout to watch the sun rise next to Uluru and watched Kata Tjuta change colour in reverse to what Uluru did the night before. The place was crowded and I understand (as experienced several times on this trip) why American tourists give themselves such a bad name. Sidenote... There are A LOT of Asian tourists here.
During the day we hiked Kata Tjuta, the scrubby red landscape is moon-like and reminds me of various places, including PEI with all the rust in the sand.
Third day of this trip we hiked Kings Canyon. A few others and myself opted for the bottom of the canyon walk, while the rest scrambled up to the top to do a circle of the rim. It was beautiful, the walk followed a creek bed so there were lots of green plants, birds and flowers. Highlight from this day was actually the tour guide bringing the bus to a screeching halt and doing a full uturn on the highway (consider it is the outback, there is no one else around) to jump out of the bus, run over to the side of the road and retrieve a thorny devil. He knew I wanted to see one. How he saw the little sand coloured lizard in the sand is a mystery to me, but he is a local.
The next day we were back in Alice for the day, where we got to wander a little bit more and enjoy the town. That night we hopped on The Ghan train, which follows the track that the original cameleers put down to travel overland in the outback. It was a long overnight trip, although pretty comfortable and entertaining to have our new friends aboard, we switched tour guides (three different ones on this trip, it was weird) and this one, Dingo, was a lot of fun. He was very entertaining, and had neat personal stories. He is the only person who I have met who is legally registered with the government as having "nomad" as his address. If that alone give you any indication of his state of being... The train stopped for a "layover" in Katherine, where we walked up to the top of the Katherine Gorge, my first hike of any effort. Then we walked back to the bottom and went swimming, no crocodiles hooray, however, I was not impressed when everyone got out and I was the last one in.
Getting back on the train took us to Darwin: famous for having a ratio of 5:1 men:women, having the highest amount of alcohol consumed in Australia, and having the highest rate of male broken jaws!
The next day on our way to Kakadu National Park we took a tour on a billabong to spot some salt water crocodiles. Scary stuff. I was more interested in the abundance of bird life in the area. Australia has so many and such beautiful birds. I especially like the "Jesus bird" who lives his life walking in water... Ie: Walking on the lilypads.
Kakadu National Park was especially interesting, half of the size of Switzerland our guide pointed out to the Swiss people on our tour. It is listed as a Unesco World Heritage site 3 times - for cultural, historical and environmental significance. My favourite part was a part of the drive we did, we passed through 3 distinct environments in a two minute drive: something forest, rainforest and savannah. There are 4 distinct different environments in the park. My other favourite part of the park was seeing extremely well preserved rock art. Most of which acted as a menu telling you where to hunt and how to prepare it, yum. This was a special place, because the traditional people still own it, and encourage visitors and allow visitors to see their sacred places and special stories, different than everywhere else who says that we can't see most of the interesting stuff. This was pioneered by a man who realized that it was the best way to preserve their heritage. Interestingly, even though he has passed away, his picture and name are still displayed in the park, because he wanted to stay there. The aboriginal people believe that the likeness and name of a deceased person should not be shown for a while after their passing, so to aid their spirit in moving on. They can not be spoken of again until an elder deems that they can no longer feel their spirit.
The last place we visited was Litchfield National Park, where we got to do some swimming in waterholes that were guaranteed free of (saltwater) crocodiles. Our guide told us after that one of the places we swam was home to a 3.5 metre freshwater crocodile. Apparently he is not particularly interested in humans, so they aren't worried about him. Umm, ok then. Besides the swim, I enjoyed tracking a huge water monitor and fairly scared some other tourists (their head looks like a giant snake) as I was very excitedly talking about it to whoever would listen, and I don't think they knew what it was. Our tour guide would not swim with us because he explained that he is superstitious, and the waterhole we were swimming at was traditionally a "women's only area" and it was protected by a mermaid like creature who would drown men if they came in. Since the waterhole has been open to the public there have been 40 something drownings... All men.. and he doesn't think that it is coincidence. I chalk it up to men's risk taking behaviour, but who knows.
We really enjoyed travelling in a group for this part of the trip, it was very interesting making new friends from Australia, Switzerland, Italy and Canada, and getting to know some others from elsewhere as well. Travelling on our own is great, but being in a group forces you to be more social and try some different things than you would otherwise, like damper, and kangaroo tail!
