At one point we end up working twenty two nights in a row and then, just when all hope seems lost, we get St Patrick's day off! It is much the same as Australia Day, although sans fireworks, and as a result my memory grows hazy when I try to recall it. It does however provide us all with a much needed opportunity to get to know the rest of the factory crowd, most of whom we see every day at changeover and yet have never before spoken to. Friends are made. Fun, as ever, is had.
And then the rain arrives. We are promised between ten days and four weeks more work but two days later the factory closes for an unknown period of time. We hang around and try not to spend money. Three weeks later we have had only one more day at work and I can feel my time in Australia tricking away, it is time to cut our losses. Me and Laura book a train to Melbourne with plans to fly to Alice Springs and Uluru before heading up to Darwin, and Lauren returns to Sydney. Due to the lack of work I haven't saved nearly as much money as I had wanted to so I suspect I'll have to scrap the West Coast plan. But perhaps I could fly from Darwin to Perth and get a job and still be able to see some more before I head home. We'll see.
In our last few days I take a few walks around Jerilderie and discover that it can look quite nice. Nevertheless I have no desire at all to stay, I have already stayed too long, and the Outback calls. We get on the bus and leave the tomatoes behind us, the sky is adorned with great puffs of glistening candy-floss and the horizon vanishes in a shimmering haze of silver.
As the train draws closer to Melbourne I realise how cut off from the world I have been. I find myself staring at people just because I don't know who they are. Or because they are wearing fashionable clothes or because they are teenagers, if there is anything about them that I haven't seen in three months. I feel almost instantly happier and more relaxed, more myself. I hadn't been aware that I had been feeing anything other than myself before hand. As fun as Jerilderie was it was never my home, my six weeks in Mebourne felt more like home than Jerilderie ever could, and the prospect of meeting new people buoys me.
That night me and Laura take a walk around the well trodden streets. I have a glass of mulled wine on an island-bar in the Yarra river that cuts Mebourne in half. The lights of the city pave gleaming paths across the dark water and despite the chill I find myself warmed from the inside and out. The next day we simply enjoy our time in the city, we go shopping, get ice creams, sit on the steps in Federation Square, visit the Art Gallery and have dinner in the Asian Beer Cafe in the wonderful Melbourne Central, a shopping centre built around a vast red-brick tower that is lit with beams of dazzling light at night. I think I've mentioned it before.
In the morning the SkyBus takes us to the airport at almost the exact same time that it once took me in the other direction, when I had first touched down in this eternal country. I see the same golden sun rise over the same endless fields of green. The skyline is a silhouette, the sky behind bleeding from orange to blue. Dark baubles dot it; hot air balloons rise with the dawn.
Our fight to Alice Springs takes us over initially familiar territory but soon the houses dwindle and the fields fade and we find ourselves flying over desert that stretches beyond sight. This, I assume, is the Outback. Why they don't just call 'outback' desert and 'bush' rain-forest I really don't know. Whatever you call it, outback or desert, there is a hell of a lot of it.
Alice Springs, in and of itself, doesn't have much to offer. It is however the gateway to the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, and for that reason it is a place we have to visit. We spend a couple of days there before our trip to the red rock and meet some more people from Scotland (suddenly we are everywhere!), we climb 'Anzac Hill', a hill with a memorial to the Australians and New Zealanders who lost their lives in WWI. It gives us views across Alice Springs and there are two things that surprise me. The landscape is both rougher and more verdant than I had expected. I expected it to be totally, or almost totally, flat, with little to no scenery. Instead I find that trees surround us, albeit sparsely in places, and craggy hills cut across the land seeming to hem the town within their ochre walls.
On a completely unrelated note, I'm pretty sure it's a law that any business here has to have the word 'Alice' in the title. Honestly. One of the more inspired ones being Al'ice' selling, of course, ice.
Finally it is time to depart on a tour that will take is to Kings Canyon, Uluru, and Kata Tjuta. Kata Tjuta, which I had never heard of before coming here, is the other end of the same bit of rock as Uluru. The seam of sandstone passes under the ground and emerges about fifty kilometers away as a collection of red hills and domes. Many people say they even prefer Kata Tjuta to Uluru itself. Well we shall see.
These three locations in question continue the long standing tradition in Australia of replacing perfectly good aboriginal names with English names ranging from the particularly uninspired (Mount Abrupt anyone?) to the flat out terrible. Uluru and Kata Tjuta have thankfully reclaimed their true names and the English names of Ayer's Rock and The Olgas are used less and less. The name King's Canyon however remains, named after, not a king, but Fieldon King, one of the financiers of an expedition into central Australia in 1872. Ernest Giles, the namer in question, also 'discovered' and named The Olgas. He intended on naming them after his benefactor Ferdinand Von Mueller but Ferdinand kindly declined and persuaded Giles to name them instead after Queen Olga of Wurttemberg as a thank you for making him a Baron. Unfortunately Giles was beaten to Uluru and just missed out on his hat trick. Instead a man named William Gosse found it and decided to forever memorialise Sir Henry Ayers, Chief Secretary of Southern Australia.
We drive out of Alice when the sun is still crouched below the horizon. Kangaroos dash across the road through the pallid light of the false dawn and the the sun begins to rise. To one side of us the dark landscape stretches to a dash of bright azure blue, glowing on the horizon, above it the pink of dawn is followed by gradually darkening shades of blue that reach across the sky until the far horizon approaches through a pale grey veil. Pastel green, yellow, orange, then back to the awakening land.
Then we come to our first stop: camels! When I arrived here I didn't even know there were any camels in Australia, but apparently there are. They were introduced between the years of 1860 and 1907 when ten thousand of them were imported from India to help with the colonisation of central and western Australia. They were used mainly for transport and for carrying items for construction. Now there are over three hundred thousand and, believe it or not, they are exported to countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia for racing, eating and even for tourism.
Me and Laura take a ride on one; it is short, painful and not worth the money. But I had never been on a camel before so I felt I had to do it. My granny had often told me how uncomfortable they can be, little did I know.
After a long drive we eventually arrive at King's Canyon. This land is amongst the oldest land on the planet, where New Zealand is a young country, tall and jagged, Australia is ancient and worn. The rocky hills around here are the remnants of mountain ranges that once would have towered above Mount Everest, and yet today not a single hill remains on this landmass that I would classify as a mountain. Wind, water and the wearing grind of time has scoured this whole continent. And here, a vast ancient slab of stone was long ago cracked both north-south and east-west by stress in the earth leaving a grid like structure of fissures leading deep into the stone. In the many years since then simple erosion has worn through these cracks creating a vast array of domes with the canyon itself, caused by similar underground movements, cutting through the centre. From afar they look like they are made of brick, and seem more reminiscent of Inca temples than natural rock formations.
The rock is a bright orange and the sky is a clear and pale blue. Tufts of green cling to the steep sides of the cliffs and tops of the vast rounded rock. Within the largest fissures, and in the canyon itself, are oases blooming with life. Water pools and plants flourish, lizards, birds, snakes and spiders abound. I see no snakes, thankfully, but do see some Kites. I keep a look our for Peregrine Falcons which also inhabit the area, but unfortunately see none.
We reach a ledge and see the canyon itself, it looks as if someone has cut through the rock and cleaved it away, as if some great artist took his pallet knife and sliced the unwanted clay from his masterpiece, leaving an edge smooth and unadorned. That particular cliff face was revealed as recently as 1991 when its own weight grew too much and it fell clean off, leaving clean, fresh rock behind. It is odd to think, when we all know how long it takes landscapes to change, that only twenty five years ago this would have been a very different place.
We finish our walk around King's Canyon and head back to the bus. The plan is to stop and gather some firewood on the way home and be back in the camp-site before it gets dark. We drive along a road that stretches to the sky in both directions when our driver, seemingly spotting a good wood gathering area, suddenly turns and the bus careens off the road down a small slope and, inevitably, gets stuck. The back of the bus is propped on higher ground than the front and the back wheels are slightly lifted so can't get purchase on the ground, the trailer behind it is still half on the road.
The driver is one of those people who refuses to accept any help from anyone. He runs around digging, getting rocks, attempting to detach the trailer, and refuses to listen to any of our suggestions. A bus containing another tour group comes along and we start to flag it down. Our driver tells us not to because he doesn't need their help. He does. So we do.
After much work that involves sticking spades underneath wheels and driving over them, and almost taking out a posse of backpackers with an unleashed trailer, the bus comes free to tumultuous applause. We gather wood as the sun sets, then take the same disastrous route back, though this time successfully.
And this is the worst part, when we flagged down the second bus driver and he got out to help he took one look at our driver and sighed then said, “Not again.”
That night we sleep in our swags beside the dying embers of the fire. Swags are, if you don't know, glorified sleeping bags. Sort of a large waterproof sleeping bag and camping mat combined into one. Whatever they are, they are comfy. Sleeping outside in the open like this is simply amazing, I wake briefly in the night and find the Milky-Way plastered in a pale band above me. A three-quarter moon blazes with silver-white, beautiful, but too bright. I retreat into my swag and go back to sleep.
The next morning we are up with the dawn and on the road to Uluru. We stop off within view of a different rock structure affectionately called 'Fooluru', as it similarly dominates the landscape around it. The sand here is a red that I have never experienced. It is terracotta, smooth and bright; rust, deep and textured. We ask our guide and he says that, while we are still outside of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, we are allowed to take some sand with us. I fill a litre water bottle to distribute amongst us sand-collecters at the end of the tour.
We drive across the vast plains and between the rocky knolls that populate the outback. The landscape relentlessly slides past me and Elbow sing to me of the wonder of life. Of open doors, of love, of change, of the take off and landing of everything. The song builds and builds until the world seems to be speeding in a blur to either side. And then I see it, in a gap between two small crags, a vast monolith, red as the setting sun. Uluru.
After that brief glimpse it is gone, and I see no more for the rest of our drive. Eventually we pull into our second camp-site, almost in time for lunch. There is a little hill behind up that offers views of the surrounding land, we eagerly climb and get our first proper view of what we are here to see. The sky is utterly blue and the land is green with patches of rust. The horizon is a perfect line all around, save for two points. To one side is the distant Kata Tjuta and to the other is Uluru. It looks much as it does in photos, and I'm sure mine will look just like the others. But they do not truly convey it at all. Even from this far off there is a weight to it, a feeling not just of size, and it is immense, but of time and age. It seems almost like a relic from an ancient world long ground to dust.
We take the required selfies then wolf down lunch. It is time to circumnavigate The Rock. The whole way around it is a ten and a half kilometre walk, it is a big rock. Our guide drives us around the whole thing then drops us off at various locations depending on how long a walk we each want to do. Four of us go the whole way including, of course, myself.
Up close it is a completely different place. You don't truly realise its size until it is towering above you. I don't know what I was expecting but whatever it was is a pale reflection of reality. There are vales and glens twisting in from its edge, sheer vertical cliffs and gentle rocky slopes. Some parts of it are so smooth they could have been sanded, some could be made of huge sheets of iron long gone to rust. Holes pock-mark parts of its surface, caused by the spears of fearsome warriors in old aboriginal legend. Great steps wend their way up to the heights above; watercourses that spend the year dry only to turn to cascading waterfalls for a day or two after the rare rain.
And the colours. Infinite azure blue creates exquisite contrast with the deep orange blood of the earth. And a sea of greens, browns and reds supports it all. When Uluru is in shade the bright of the orange fades until it appears almost grey, and indeed the rock itself is grey, but the earth here is saturated with iron causing anything that is exposed to the elements to literally rust, giving it the colour we know so well.
We continue round and it seems almost unbelievable that we can still be circling the same structure. Caves like giant mouths yawn ominously over me. In some the rock seems to drip like melted wax that suddenly hardened. Some of the caves have aboriginal paintings in them, none particularly old and they normally paint over them every few years. They are used to teach children the stories of their ancestors, so when the time comes for the children to learn a certain story they return to the place where that story is told and tell it again, painting it as they do. Who is to know how old some of these stories are, and how much they have changed over the thousands of years since their creation, like Chinese whispers across the generations.
None of us make the climb to the top, this place is sacred to the Aboriginals and even they would not climb it. It is like a stranger invading their most private place and defiling it. The climb should be closed, and it will be closed when less than twenty percent of tourists use it. The numbers these days are down to about twenty seven percent, so hopefully it won't be long. From afar a line of ants seem to be slowly crawling their way up a ridge wearing a pale grey path as they go, revealing the true colours of the rock and their own insensitivity.
We make our way to where we will watch the sunset. Our whole day has been filled with dire warnings about missing the sunset. Ever since we woke, before dawn, up Ting has taken up the role of taskmaster and hurried us on our way with ralying calls of 'we don't want to miss the sunset'. Well we arrive on time and our guide quickly produces eight bottles of champagne. We instantly forgive him for any off-road transgression the day before. Sefies with Uluru abound. The daylight drops and the rock grows redder and redder as the sky darkens and blooms into colour. Someone wants a group photo so we all turn our backs on Uluru. We miss the sunset.
By the time we have to drive back to camp some of us, mainly the Scottish and the Italians, have had too much champagne and not enough food. The back of the bus swiftly descends into a strobe-lit topless rave, presided over by DJ Laura. We return to camp and have to swiftly return to normality in order to cook dinner.
We spend another night in our swags under the stars. Ting's delightful conversation makes her an excellent swag buddy and Laura and I quickly stake our claims to either side of her. We don't stay up too late. After all, we don't want to miss the sunrise.
We arrive at our sunrise viewing spot, just to the side of Kata Tjuta, about half an hour before sunrise. Even as we drive along the road towards it the sky is changing behind us, colours seeping into the deep navy above, lightening it and blending with it like ink. I run up the walkway that winds round the back of the hill and crest it to one the most beautiful sights I have ever seen.
The horizon could be cut with diamond, so precise does it look. The world is simply split in two, below there is but black while above there is a dazzling white glow, hovering just above the skyline, and it exudes colour into the world around it. Bright yellow and sandy orange, pastel pink and violet. And between the two worlds stands Uluru, magnificent and strong. It loses none of its potency across the distance that separates us and reduces it to but a bump that mars the perfect black line before us. If anything it seems even greater, for there is no greater setting for it. The whole world is obscured and yet it protrudes into vision, demanding attention, and above it the light is brightest, as if celebrating in its glory.
I remember that is is Easter morning, there really is no more perfect way to celebrate than with the view before me.
And then the rain arrives. We are promised between ten days and four weeks more work but two days later the factory closes for an unknown period of time. We hang around and try not to spend money. Three weeks later we have had only one more day at work and I can feel my time in Australia tricking away, it is time to cut our losses. Me and Laura book a train to Melbourne with plans to fly to Alice Springs and Uluru before heading up to Darwin, and Lauren returns to Sydney. Due to the lack of work I haven't saved nearly as much money as I had wanted to so I suspect I'll have to scrap the West Coast plan. But perhaps I could fly from Darwin to Perth and get a job and still be able to see some more before I head home. We'll see.
In our last few days I take a few walks around Jerilderie and discover that it can look quite nice. Nevertheless I have no desire at all to stay, I have already stayed too long, and the Outback calls. We get on the bus and leave the tomatoes behind us, the sky is adorned with great puffs of glistening candy-floss and the horizon vanishes in a shimmering haze of silver.
This delight appears in our room one day. And that is a pint glass I caught it in
Just another spill at the factory.
New pals in the field next door.
Legitimately up in the pub, and has been for three months so I guess the poor sod is still toothless.
At one point there was some sort of biohazard in ourgarden.
A stunning Southern Old Lady moth that I found in the bathroom.
Farewell Jerilderie.
That night me and Laura take a walk around the well trodden streets. I have a glass of mulled wine on an island-bar in the Yarra river that cuts Mebourne in half. The lights of the city pave gleaming paths across the dark water and despite the chill I find myself warmed from the inside and out. The next day we simply enjoy our time in the city, we go shopping, get ice creams, sit on the steps in Federation Square, visit the Art Gallery and have dinner in the Asian Beer Cafe in the wonderful Melbourne Central, a shopping centre built around a vast red-brick tower that is lit with beams of dazzling light at night. I think I've mentioned it before.
The latest instillation in the NGV.
In the morning the SkyBus takes us to the airport at almost the exact same time that it once took me in the other direction, when I had first touched down in this eternal country. I see the same golden sun rise over the same endless fields of green. The skyline is a silhouette, the sky behind bleeding from orange to blue. Dark baubles dot it; hot air balloons rise with the dawn.
Our fight to Alice Springs takes us over initially familiar territory but soon the houses dwindle and the fields fade and we find ourselves flying over desert that stretches beyond sight. This, I assume, is the Outback. Why they don't just call 'outback' desert and 'bush' rain-forest I really don't know. Whatever you call it, outback or desert, there is a hell of a lot of it.
On a completely unrelated note, I'm pretty sure it's a law that any business here has to have the word 'Alice' in the title. Honestly. One of the more inspired ones being Al'ice' selling, of course, ice.
Alice
Finally it is time to depart on a tour that will take is to Kings Canyon, Uluru, and Kata Tjuta. Kata Tjuta, which I had never heard of before coming here, is the other end of the same bit of rock as Uluru. The seam of sandstone passes under the ground and emerges about fifty kilometers away as a collection of red hills and domes. Many people say they even prefer Kata Tjuta to Uluru itself. Well we shall see.
These three locations in question continue the long standing tradition in Australia of replacing perfectly good aboriginal names with English names ranging from the particularly uninspired (Mount Abrupt anyone?) to the flat out terrible. Uluru and Kata Tjuta have thankfully reclaimed their true names and the English names of Ayer's Rock and The Olgas are used less and less. The name King's Canyon however remains, named after, not a king, but Fieldon King, one of the financiers of an expedition into central Australia in 1872. Ernest Giles, the namer in question, also 'discovered' and named The Olgas. He intended on naming them after his benefactor Ferdinand Von Mueller but Ferdinand kindly declined and persuaded Giles to name them instead after Queen Olga of Wurttemberg as a thank you for making him a Baron. Unfortunately Giles was beaten to Uluru and just missed out on his hat trick. Instead a man named William Gosse found it and decided to forever memorialise Sir Henry Ayers, Chief Secretary of Southern Australia.
We drive out of Alice when the sun is still crouched below the horizon. Kangaroos dash across the road through the pallid light of the false dawn and the the sun begins to rise. To one side of us the dark landscape stretches to a dash of bright azure blue, glowing on the horizon, above it the pink of dawn is followed by gradually darkening shades of blue that reach across the sky until the far horizon approaches through a pale grey veil. Pastel green, yellow, orange, then back to the awakening land.
Then we come to our first stop: camels! When I arrived here I didn't even know there were any camels in Australia, but apparently there are. They were introduced between the years of 1860 and 1907 when ten thousand of them were imported from India to help with the colonisation of central and western Australia. They were used mainly for transport and for carrying items for construction. Now there are over three hundred thousand and, believe it or not, they are exported to countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia for racing, eating and even for tourism.
Me and Laura take a ride on one; it is short, painful and not worth the money. But I had never been on a camel before so I felt I had to do it. My granny had often told me how uncomfortable they can be, little did I know.
Every town has a giant something, and they are all very proud of them. I've seen strawberries, kangaroos and echidnas to name a few. I've surprised Jerilderie didn't have a giant tomato.
After a long drive we eventually arrive at King's Canyon. This land is amongst the oldest land on the planet, where New Zealand is a young country, tall and jagged, Australia is ancient and worn. The rocky hills around here are the remnants of mountain ranges that once would have towered above Mount Everest, and yet today not a single hill remains on this landmass that I would classify as a mountain. Wind, water and the wearing grind of time has scoured this whole continent. And here, a vast ancient slab of stone was long ago cracked both north-south and east-west by stress in the earth leaving a grid like structure of fissures leading deep into the stone. In the many years since then simple erosion has worn through these cracks creating a vast array of domes with the canyon itself, caused by similar underground movements, cutting through the centre. From afar they look like they are made of brick, and seem more reminiscent of Inca temples than natural rock formations.
The rock is a bright orange and the sky is a clear and pale blue. Tufts of green cling to the steep sides of the cliffs and tops of the vast rounded rock. Within the largest fissures, and in the canyon itself, are oases blooming with life. Water pools and plants flourish, lizards, birds, snakes and spiders abound. I see no snakes, thankfully, but do see some Kites. I keep a look our for Peregrine Falcons which also inhabit the area, but unfortunately see none.
We reach a ledge and see the canyon itself, it looks as if someone has cut through the rock and cleaved it away, as if some great artist took his pallet knife and sliced the unwanted clay from his masterpiece, leaving an edge smooth and unadorned. That particular cliff face was revealed as recently as 1991 when its own weight grew too much and it fell clean off, leaving clean, fresh rock behind. It is odd to think, when we all know how long it takes landscapes to change, that only twenty five years ago this would have been a very different place.
Pride Rock anyone?
The driver is one of those people who refuses to accept any help from anyone. He runs around digging, getting rocks, attempting to detach the trailer, and refuses to listen to any of our suggestions. A bus containing another tour group comes along and we start to flag it down. Our driver tells us not to because he doesn't need their help. He does. So we do.
After much work that involves sticking spades underneath wheels and driving over them, and almost taking out a posse of backpackers with an unleashed trailer, the bus comes free to tumultuous applause. We gather wood as the sun sets, then take the same disastrous route back, though this time successfully.
And this is the worst part, when we flagged down the second bus driver and he got out to help he took one look at our driver and sighed then said, “Not again.”
We have a barbecue back at the campsite and lay our swags out in a circle around the fire and under the stars. We have a pretty good group, about twenty, a quarter of whom are Italian, although they make about three quarters of the noise. They are fantastic. Rowdy, changeable, passionate, tactile; very, very Italian. We get on like a house on fire.
The rest of our group is mainly spread across Europe and China, with one wonderful Taiwanese girl (woman?) called Ting. She has been living on the roads of the world for, if I recall correctly, six years or so, and stops for work when she needs to. She is currently hitch-hiking her way up the centre of Australia and has a rather unfortunate story involving an old man exposing himself, but apart from that seems to be loving life.
Sometimes she does or says things that other people might find offensive, but I genuinely think it is just a cultural thing and she has no idea that she could be causing offence. She decides that this poor French girl looked like Roger Federer and proceeds to spend the entire tour calling her Roger and asking her about tennis and life in Switzerland. At one point she even gets a picture of him out and started parading it around so we can all compare. I don't think the girl knows who Roger Federer is, which probably makes it worse.
That night we sleep in our swags beside the dying embers of the fire. Swags are, if you don't know, glorified sleeping bags. Sort of a large waterproof sleeping bag and camping mat combined into one. Whatever they are, they are comfy. Sleeping outside in the open like this is simply amazing, I wake briefly in the night and find the Milky-Way plastered in a pale band above me. A three-quarter moon blazes with silver-white, beautiful, but too bright. I retreat into my swag and go back to sleep.
The next morning we are up with the dawn and on the road to Uluru. We stop off within view of a different rock structure affectionately called 'Fooluru', as it similarly dominates the landscape around it. The sand here is a red that I have never experienced. It is terracotta, smooth and bright; rust, deep and textured. We ask our guide and he says that, while we are still outside of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, we are allowed to take some sand with us. I fill a litre water bottle to distribute amongst us sand-collecters at the end of the tour.
The remnants of our camp.
Fooluru
Just look at that colour!
“Over my shoulder and just as I leave,
I see you slipping the world up your sleeve,
We'll take it and run.”
After that brief glimpse it is gone, and I see no more for the rest of our drive. Eventually we pull into our second camp-site, almost in time for lunch. There is a little hill behind up that offers views of the surrounding land, we eagerly climb and get our first proper view of what we are here to see. The sky is utterly blue and the land is green with patches of rust. The horizon is a perfect line all around, save for two points. To one side is the distant Kata Tjuta and to the other is Uluru. It looks much as it does in photos, and I'm sure mine will look just like the others. But they do not truly convey it at all. Even from this far off there is a weight to it, a feeling not just of size, and it is immense, but of time and age. It seems almost like a relic from an ancient world long ground to dust.
Four caterpillars masquerading as one.
We take the required selfies then wolf down lunch. It is time to circumnavigate The Rock. The whole way around it is a ten and a half kilometre walk, it is a big rock. Our guide drives us around the whole thing then drops us off at various locations depending on how long a walk we each want to do. Four of us go the whole way including, of course, myself.
Up close it is a completely different place. You don't truly realise its size until it is towering above you. I don't know what I was expecting but whatever it was is a pale reflection of reality. There are vales and glens twisting in from its edge, sheer vertical cliffs and gentle rocky slopes. Some parts of it are so smooth they could have been sanded, some could be made of huge sheets of iron long gone to rust. Holes pock-mark parts of its surface, caused by the spears of fearsome warriors in old aboriginal legend. Great steps wend their way up to the heights above; watercourses that spend the year dry only to turn to cascading waterfalls for a day or two after the rare rain.
And the colours. Infinite azure blue creates exquisite contrast with the deep orange blood of the earth. And a sea of greens, browns and reds supports it all. When Uluru is in shade the bright of the orange fades until it appears almost grey, and indeed the rock itself is grey, but the earth here is saturated with iron causing anything that is exposed to the elements to literally rust, giving it the colour we know so well.
We continue round and it seems almost unbelievable that we can still be circling the same structure. Caves like giant mouths yawn ominously over me. In some the rock seems to drip like melted wax that suddenly hardened. Some of the caves have aboriginal paintings in them, none particularly old and they normally paint over them every few years. They are used to teach children the stories of their ancestors, so when the time comes for the children to learn a certain story they return to the place where that story is told and tell it again, painting it as they do. Who is to know how old some of these stories are, and how much they have changed over the thousands of years since their creation, like Chinese whispers across the generations.
Rock face. Get it?
But the onion bush was VERY interesting.
Trees appear like shrubs.
More faces.
We make our way to where we will watch the sunset. Our whole day has been filled with dire warnings about missing the sunset. Ever since we woke, before dawn, up Ting has taken up the role of taskmaster and hurried us on our way with ralying calls of 'we don't want to miss the sunset'. Well we arrive on time and our guide quickly produces eight bottles of champagne. We instantly forgive him for any off-road transgression the day before. Sefies with Uluru abound. The daylight drops and the rock grows redder and redder as the sky darkens and blooms into colour. Someone wants a group photo so we all turn our backs on Uluru. We miss the sunset.
By the time we have to drive back to camp some of us, mainly the Scottish and the Italians, have had too much champagne and not enough food. The back of the bus swiftly descends into a strobe-lit topless rave, presided over by DJ Laura. We return to camp and have to swiftly return to normality in order to cook dinner.
We spend another night in our swags under the stars. Ting's delightful conversation makes her an excellent swag buddy and Laura and I quickly stake our claims to either side of her. We don't stay up too late. After all, we don't want to miss the sunrise.
We arrive at our sunrise viewing spot, just to the side of Kata Tjuta, about half an hour before sunrise. Even as we drive along the road towards it the sky is changing behind us, colours seeping into the deep navy above, lightening it and blending with it like ink. I run up the walkway that winds round the back of the hill and crest it to one the most beautiful sights I have ever seen.
The horizon could be cut with diamond, so precise does it look. The world is simply split in two, below there is but black while above there is a dazzling white glow, hovering just above the skyline, and it exudes colour into the world around it. Bright yellow and sandy orange, pastel pink and violet. And between the two worlds stands Uluru, magnificent and strong. It loses none of its potency across the distance that separates us and reduces it to but a bump that mars the perfect black line before us. If anything it seems even greater, for there is no greater setting for it. The whole world is obscured and yet it protrudes into vision, demanding attention, and above it the light is brightest, as if celebrating in its glory.
I remember that is is Easter morning, there really is no more perfect way to celebrate than with the view before me.
Slowly asthe time passes the colours change, the bright glow is diffused throughout the sky and the purples and violets retreat to shades of grey blue floating on a golden sea. Never have I been so aware of the immensity of the sky. The gilded orange on the horizon grows deeper and brighter, emanating from a single point, just to the side of Uluru. Then the sun sends its first golden rays across the land and the world brightens about me. The whole process is utterly beautiful, but I think none of it compares to that first moment when I crested the hill, I will remember it forever.
The rest of the day we spend in Kata Tjuta. From afar it certainly does not have the same spectacular immensity of Uluru, even though it takes up more space. But walking through it, between the towering domes of burning stone and through the verdant green valleys abundant with life, I can honestly say that I prefer it. It has more beauty, and the beauty is gradually revealed. Uluru is immediate and arresting, Kata Tjuta is mystical and forgotten. We walk through a valley of green that would have felt at home in the British Isles if it weren't for the lofty orange belfries that encircled it. Then we pass over a ridge that reveals a valley, or plain, I'm not sure, that I would happily spend the rest of my life in. I know I often claim to see things that are more beautiful than anything I've ever seen, but that is how it feels to me at the time. No doubt it is not true, if I had to compare this view to the one from the top of Ben Lomond in New Zealand which would I choose? I have no idea. But at this moment I cannot imagine anywhere more perfect.
Here the saffron domes are transformed into golden green monuments, profuse with plants and birds. They rise from the plain triumphantly, and block out any trace of the world beyond. There might not be a world beyond. There need not be a world beyond, I could stay here forever.
Of course, photos cannot begin to portray it, but I take them anyway in the vain hope that if my memory fades they will make a fit replacement.
Vain attempts to capture the glory.
The sun breaches.
The rest of the day we spend in Kata Tjuta. From afar it certainly does not have the same spectacular immensity of Uluru, even though it takes up more space. But walking through it, between the towering domes of burning stone and through the verdant green valleys abundant with life, I can honestly say that I prefer it. It has more beauty, and the beauty is gradually revealed. Uluru is immediate and arresting, Kata Tjuta is mystical and forgotten. We walk through a valley of green that would have felt at home in the British Isles if it weren't for the lofty orange belfries that encircled it. Then we pass over a ridge that reveals a valley, or plain, I'm not sure, that I would happily spend the rest of my life in. I know I often claim to see things that are more beautiful than anything I've ever seen, but that is how it feels to me at the time. No doubt it is not true, if I had to compare this view to the one from the top of Ben Lomond in New Zealand which would I choose? I have no idea. But at this moment I cannot imagine anywhere more perfect.
Here the saffron domes are transformed into golden green monuments, profuse with plants and birds. They rise from the plain triumphantly, and block out any trace of the world beyond. There might not be a world beyond. There need not be a world beyond, I could stay here forever.
Of course, photos cannot begin to portray it, but I take them anyway in the vain hope that if my memory fades they will make a fit replacement.
We walk through the valley and I never want it to end, but of course it must. We pass between two sheer cliff faces that can't be more than one or two hundred meters apart. They tower above us, one black one orange, and frame the interminable sapphire.
Elephant?
And with that unmatchable highlight our tour comes to an end. We return to the bus and are driven the hours and hours back to Alice Springs, arriving just before tea. That night we all gather in the bar in the hostel and spend a wonderful evening in each others company, laughing, dancing and sharing sand. Ting tells Roger how happy she is to have met him (her).
Once again I experience that oh so hard aspect of travelling where you have to part from people you are just getting to know. This time it is the Italians and a lovely guy from Austria that I am loath to part from. There is also a girl from London but her at least I know I will see again. It is not as acute as with the Germans on Fraser Island, but still, when I blearily stumble onto my bus at five am the next morning I can't help but feel I am going in the wrong direction.
I gaze out the window and decide that next time I go travelling I will make no plans, book nothing, and simply go along with whoever I find that I want to go along with. I think over the tour to Uluru and all that I have now seen. I smile when I think of all the fun that I had last night. And then I remember, my bottle of sand the colour of sunrise is still sitting on the bench outside my room.
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