It was amazing to see this icon of the Australian Outback. It was like the first time I was in the Amazon. Here I was, in this place I had read about all my life. I'd seen pictures and watched documentary movies where this was the subject. And all the while never really imagined myself here.
Uluru or sometimes known as Ayer's Rock is one giant piece of sandstone standing one thousand one hundred and forty feet high and has a circumference of almost six miles. It is a sacred site for the aboriginal people of the area and their name for it is Uluru, which doesn't mean anything else in their language. The Whites first laid eyes on in it in 1873 and it was named for then Chief Secretary of South Australia, so basically it was named for someone who actually never saw it. Which is, as Mim points out kind, of like, uh, Mt. McKinley and Denali. It was called Ayer's Rock for more than a century until 1993 when the Government of Australia officially gave its approval for it to have two names. So it was christened "Ayer's Rock/Uluru. That name stood until 2002 when the Australian Government granted a request made by the Alice Springs Tourism Association and changed the name to Uluru/Ayer's Rock.
There are many interesting things about Uluru and one of them being that there isn't a place where there is a space between one rock and another. It is homogeneous, one giant blob of sandstone and that is the reason for its survival. There are no scree slopes or alluvial fans. No small crevices that over the eons can transform into gorges such as the ones we visited in the MacDonnell Range. In the past there were other rocks like Uluru but they weren't homogeneous and thus the wind and rain have reduced them to the red dirt we are walking on now.
We were excited to be here and we sat out to hike the circumference. We began on the south side where there is a year around water source and thus according to the pamphlet was an "amazing place for birdwatching".We walked back into this area where the formation of the rock formed a small pocket canyon. The vegetation was lush and the breeze made it ten degrees cooler. Soon we saw five or six White=-plumed Honeyeaters and a Gray Shrike-Thrush. There wasn't much else going on so we started on our hike.
We came out of the little canyon and started walking the trail. As the wind began to die down the flies began to rise up. There were so many that it became a constant battle to keep them from getting to know you intimately. I abandoned my sun protection by taking off my hat and keeping up a constant assault on not only the flies, but on my face too. I would slap the right side, then middle, then left, then middle, and so on and so forth. People coming at us in the opposite direction had their own way of dealing with the menace. Some were very primitive using only their arms and hands and looking line they were doing some speed Thai Chi, while others picked a small branch off of a gum tree and were whacking against them like a flagellating monk. And then there we the ones wearing nets. It looked to me like the nets weren't doing the trick because they seemed to be as busy as the rest of us in the battle against the flies.
This was one of the longest six miles of my life. We'd hit areas where the wind would blow and we'd feel as if we had hit the promised land. Then we'd come to a stretch where the wind was still and as quickly as that feeling came, it disappeared. But we pressed on and soon we had covered three-quarters of the circumference.
At this point there was a long single file line climbing to the top of Uluru. Mounted in the rock were stakes with cables to assist people in the steep ascent. I had read about this climb and how the native people did not approve due to the sacred status of the rock. They had asked the government to disallow the climb but the government declined. So the aboriginal people of the area put up signs that read "Please do not climb, this is sacred land, please respect our wishes"and posted them in several locations in this specific area. But hundreds of people either couldn't read or didn't care because there was a steady stream of people climbing the rock. Later on I read that this is the last month that one can climb Uluru. It seems the government has finally decided to ban the climb.
We continued on and the wind died down, the sun was brutal, but now there were birds. So I started trying to track them down and all of a sudden the flies weren't so bad. At least in my opinion. Not so for Mim, cause she took one look at me, rolled her eyes and said "give me the dam keys, I'll meet you back at the van". So I fished them out of my pack and off she went off down the trail with her arms flailing about. I found a few Gray-headed Honeyeaters, a Spiny-cheeked Honeyeater, and two Little Woodswallows. Again it was really cool to watch the woodswallow. They are such good fliers and the backdrop of Uluru was, well, sublime.
We meet up at the car and soon we were back at the caravan park for showers and a little R & R. After a shower I played a little guitar and wrote some in the blog while Mim went for a reconnaissance mission for the tourist park. She reported back that the swimming pool was filled with teens and there was a coffee shop that served iced coffees. I put away what I was doing and off we went.
The iced coffees were not as good as the ones at Omiston, but then again we were not as hot and tired either, so that may have had something to do with it. After coffee we went to the market for some ice because, did I mention that the night before we had gin and tonics with no ice! Can you even imagine the suffering? But the market was out of ice so it looked like it was going to be the same situation tonight. But no, Mim found a couple of little plastic ice trays. She was so thrilled at finding these ice trays that you would think that she had won the lottery and was going to retire tomorrow.
Backing up a little. She had conducted an experiment in preparation for this moment. She had filled a small plastic water bottle with water and placed it in the small freezer in the van. Sure enough it froze pretty solid, She took it out and I sat it in the sun. As it melted we wrestled for control of that bottle. And now in the market she was triumphant! We bought the ice trays and she filled them up with water and stuck them in the freezer announcing that we would be sipping ice cold gin and tonics while watching the sun set on Uluru. I gave out a "here, here," and added an "amen sister" and we made ourselves busy for the next few hours and tried hard not to check on the progress of the ice.
Sure enough, we drove out to the sunset viewing area with two hundred other people. But we were special cause Mim made us cheese and cracker plates, complete with olives and tomatoes, while I broke out my tripod and worked on a jerry-rigged system to catch a time lapsed photo of the sun set on Uluru. I found a good spot and claimed it by setting my tripod down in the red sand. Then I placed my phone in the landscape position and propped it up with a package of gum and a few sticks that I found on the ground. I got it just right when Mim came out with, you guessed it, an ice cold gin and tonic.That's when I knew that we were really roughing it.
All of the Woodswallows are gorgeous. Their chiseled looks kinda reminded me of Cedar Waxwings. We experienced the flies in Western Australia, but maybe not as bad as you had them! The Uluru Sunset video is really cool.
ReplyDeleteThe likeness to Cedar Waxing is spot on.
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