bnfc: The Red Centre

I went on a three day tour of Australia’s world famous reddish and arid heartland – how could you not if you in Alice Springs? Well one reason is that it’s 500km from Alice, but if you’ve been in Australia for any decent amount of time you’d know that 500km is not very far at all.

There were about 24 of us from America, Bavaria, Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Spain, Switzerland and Sweden and our tour guide was Dave from Qld. The group was fairly young for the most part and everyone seemed to get along very well. Dave was a really nice guy who told us the earth was 45,000 million years old. His job was to take us to Uluru, the Olga’s and King’s Canyon (1500km over 3 days) and to give us the odd talk on geology and native beliefs.

On the way we drove over a 360 million year old river (the Finke) which is apparently the oldest in the world. The landscape sure looks old. It looks like it’s been battered and burnt and torn apart forever. I remember thinking that about the Zambezi valley but the RC looks even older and more raped. It all used to be under a sea according to Dave, which is why the Olga’s are rounded like pebbles.

The Olga’s are what the honkies called these 36 dome-like structures. The Aborigines called it Kata Tjuta which means “many heads”. Dave asked us to ponder how the Aborigines knew all the heads had only one body, i.e. that all 36 domes were part of one big rock. I figured it was a guess.

When we got back to the bus I caught a glimpse of some outback wildlife.

By the end of the trip I came to realise that Outback wildlife (at least the visible wildlife) is all pets that have escaped and come to flourish in the desert, remote from the clutches of man. The camel above is one of over a million and there are hundreds of thousands of brumbies and dingos too.

We missed the sunset at Uluru which struck me as a schoolboy error, given it’s legendry beauty at the close of day. We had to settle for Kata Tjuta, but none of use seemed particularly disappointed.

The five o’clock start the next morning was most disagreeable after 2 litres of “goon”. It’s difficult to take sunrise near a big rock seriously when you’re still half pissed from red wine. My photo is illustrative:

With a more light I improved but couldn’t fit the damn thing in the picture.

After the photography it was time to either climb the rock or do the 9km walk around it. Seven or eight of us were irreverent enough to ignore Aborigine pleas not to climb Uluru and the rest walked around it. When I was canoeing in Katherine I got talking to a lady from Queensland who told me, “when you go to Ayers Rock do me a favour and climb it, I’m an Australian and it’s my bloody rock too.” Fair dinkum.

It almost fucking killed me in the end.

The sign on the right implores you not to climb Uluru but a dotted line shows the best route and metal posts are provided for the steep beginning.

Kata Tjuta in the distance above. It’s 36km away from Uluru.

Like Ngarkat, the “Red Centre” is awash with flies but they didn’t seem as aggressive as their South Australian cousins. Some people had fly nets but I found that chain smoking is probably as effective.

We headed now for our final destination which was Kings Canyon – Dave’s favourite place – but not before we had an another opportunity to take photos of what must be the world’s most photographed rock. (And this time I managed to fit it all in).

On the way to the canyon we stopped a few times, once to look at a salt lake and this mountain:

Once to look at some brumbies:

We also stopped to pick up firewood and to stalk some more camels before getting to our campsite just before sunset.

It’s true that King’s Canyon is beautiful and it’s easy to see why it’s Dave’s favourite. But after finishing my 4l goon it was quite wasted on me. We had a great fire all evening and the group got merry and I bruised my leg on the buses tow hitch by stupidly trying to jump over it in the complete darkness. So another 5am start probably wasn’t easy for anybody.