The Southern Part of the Northern Territory

Flying into Uluru (Ayers Rock and Resort) was like flying over an Aboriginal dot painting. After being in green, humid Cairns, the landscape in the Outback was stark and beautiful and full of color and contrasts and shadows. My pictures from the plane did not turn out because the atmosphere was hazy, for which I was disappointed because the views were stunning and could be the inspiration for great prints and collages.

I arrived in Yulara, the name of the town outside of which lies Ayers Rock and Kata Tjuta (both World Heritage sites), in the middle of the day and went directly to the Australian Post Office because I had been lugging around reference materials and scarves and other various small items from Java on and needed to get rid of some of the weight that I was carting around. I then checked out the shops, bought groceries (since I am staying in an apartment) and then took a ride around the entire complex to see what the other accomodations were like. I was quite happy where I was!!! And it was the first time that I had cooked in two months. Wow!!! I could get used to that.

The following day, I went to Kata Tjuta, also known as The Olgas, for an afternoon hike and Sunset Champagne talk. The Olgas are a formation of 36 monoliths about 20 miles from Ayer's Rock. The name Kata Tjuta means "many heads" in the local Aboriginal language. They have been called "rounded minarets, giant cupolas, and monstrous domes" that form an eerie, hole-in-the-wall maze.  It was good to get oriented to the Northern Territory and Outback and learn about the local Aboriginal culture. The Aboriginal Art in this region is very different from that in Cairns, for obvious reasons. Cairns has a tropical climate, and the terrain and food sources vary a great deal from those in the Ayer's Rock region. I never heard how many different aboriginal tribes exist in Australia but it has to number in the hundreds. I know that each child grows up learning three or four languages, English being their third or fourth language, because they learn the languages of their neighbors for social reasons and for inter-tribal marriages to keep the lineages sound.  On the Kata Tjuta walk, I learned that there are feral camels in the area as well as kangaroos and wallabies. The camels were used to help build the train rail system that was extended to Darwin in the last decade. When the construction was completed, the Afghan owners of the camels released them rather than kill them and the camels now live happily in the Outback desert. So, the various scat was very interesting. Aren't you glad to know that??! And the group I was touring with was interesting. Three people were from Sydney. One of the women reminded me of the actress, Judy Davis, except she had a strawberry blond buzz cut (same lips and eyes and demeanor, tho) and the man reminded me very much of a more handsome Geoffrey Rush. It turns out that he is a very famous stage actor in Australia and he just finished a long run in Melbourne playing in "Priscilla of the Desert". He would have been perfect in it! And now that I have been to Alice Springs (the airport counts!) and Yulara, I totally get the culture in which "Priscilla of the Desert") was placed. As we drove along in our van, he recited Noel Coward works!!!

The following day, I walked the perimeter of Ayer's Rock in the morning. The walk is 11 kilometers and the experience was well worth it.  It is the summit of a massive chunk of sandstone formed about 600 million years ago with only 10% of the rock showing at the surface from erosion exposing the mass. As I started out, I ran into a free ranger tour of the Mala Springs area, so I joined up with them and learned a bit about the sacred places at Uluru (it is now called Uluru - it was Ayer's Rock, but it was renamed when the land was granted back to the Aborigines in 1985). Because most of the interesting rock formations on the rock face are actually sacred to the local tribes, you are not permited to take photographs, because the tribes live by their "law" and to break the law invokes severe punishment (men still get speared in the thigh). If a man saw a photo on-line of a sacred women's place, he would be breaking the law unwittingly, even though he did not seek out the information. So, when I headed off on my own, I tried to honor that "law" but just in case, I will not be loading any close-up photos of Uluru on-line.  There are seven sites where the public can see Aboriginal rock art. I only saw two of them, at the two springs, Mala and Kuniya. Kuniya has three or four different painted rock faces and they are stunning. I DID take pictures of these, as it is allowed. Uluru is composed of sandstone with a high iron content. That varies from Kata Tjuta, in that Kata Tjuta is made up of granite, kneiss and basalt in a conglomerate and is very hard and bumpy, but it also has a high iron content, which explains why both are red.  The rock RUSTS!!! The walk took about three hours.

After I finished walking the perimeter, I had another 2km walk to the Cultural Center where I was being picked up by van. On that walk, I saw ant mounds, termite mounds and a 6-7" snake who kept smelling me with his tongue. Since I have heard that all snakes in Australia are poisonous, I used my telescopic lens to take his picture, but at least he was in squiggle form compared to the stick he was next to. The Englishman from York with whom I spoke on the Great Barrier Reef snorkeling trip was right. If you are going to Cairns, Ayer's Rock and Darwin and want to visit a good cultural Center, go to Tjapukai in Cairns. The centers in Uluru and Kakadu are not much more than dry diorama exhibits.

My final experience at Ayer's Rock was FANTASTIC! I went on a star gazing tour with viewing through a good sized telescope. The Milky Way was out and sparkling in its full glory. We found out how to find true north via the Southern Cross and other methods that I do not remember, looked at two different star clusters in the Southern Cross formation, found the six astrological constellations that were showing at the time, looked at Mars, Saturn and its rings, the Magellan nebulae cluster and the fabulous BLUE nebulae in Orion's belt!!! It was a really blue! The following day, I flew to Darwin to rent a car and drive to Kakadu National Forest, another World Heritage Site. That will be covered in my next blog entry!

Sights=aboriginal rock art, ridges, ledges, columns, tracks and flows of air and water-sculptured red rock, animal scat, bottlebrush trees, desert peas, grevillea, gum coohbah, dot art paintings, a snake, termite and ant mounds, interesting grasses, the hole of a very large desert goana (monitor lizard), wattle, bloodwood, black tea trees, red sand dunes with green, yellow, beige and brown growth, stars, nebulae, planets, falling stars, great sunrises and sunsets, butterflies, rabbits, Crocodile Dundee hats, building for bush pilot doctor's services, heavy drinking crowd at the Pioneer Lodge

Sounds=birds chirping, bus motors

Tastes=great Thai green curry coconut chicken (cooked by moi) that lasted my entire visit, Diet Coke and water by the gallon, Bitter Lemon, Nescafe powdered coffee (what you get in Bali as well), pineapple-mango fruit juice

Smells=none that I can think of other than my great chicken curry. It was a desert, after all