The Long Overdue Walkabout: Day 6 – Things I Learned At Uluru
Much like this Long Overdue series, we're still on that long journey to nowhere…
I had to beat the sun again to catch another tour bus. I once again stumbled in the dark to half-stuff my belongings and head out of my room, and proceeded to wait in the lobby for my ride to arrive. And waited…and waited…one by one, a tour operator would drive up to the front of the hostel and another traveler or couple would walk out the door, bags in hand. Some went into large buses, some went into small vans. It was almost comical since every vehicle was probably going to Uluru. Close to an hour late, a van-tank mashup pulled up with a small trailer in tow. Certainly not as cool as the tank from Kakadu, but I deemed it cooler than any other mode of transportation to Uluru.
First stop was the WayOutback offices to settle our payments. There I spotted green fly nets for sale.
It could have been $1000 for a net, and it would still be one of the least regrettable purchases of my life. Even though the amount of flies weren’t as populous as Kakadu, the Uluru fly colonies were still the same aggressive, persistent buggers as their Kakadu neighbors. There was certain sense of satisfaction watching them inches from my face crawling in front of me, but never being able to touch. *
Always charge your camera batteries.
Alice Springs advertises itself as the nearest town to Uluru. But near is a relative term in the Outback, as Alice Springs was a healthy 5 and a half hour drive to the big rock. And in one of the biggest epic failures of my life, I didn’t think to charge my camera battery before 3 days of camping. So, I’m in the most stunningly beautiful landscapes heading to a natural world wonder, and my red battery light is flashing itself to a fast death. Each blink of the red battery icon was a stab to my happiness. The next three days consisted of breaking from the group desperately searching for outlets at every bathroom break, gift shop, museum, and roadside stop we reached. Like many modern conveniences, outlets are rare in the Outback. And even when I was able to find an outlet in a sketchy corner somewhere, all I got was 5 minutes max to charge it less I wanted to be stranded in a laundry room of an apartment complex or campground bathroom. Very distressing times.
Camels
So to break up our 5 hour journey to Uluru, we stopped at a camel farm. I honestly had no clue camels existed in Australia before this, but it turns out camels are quite a big deal in Australia. Dromedaries (one humped camels) and their cameleers (tying “burrito artisan” as coolest sounding job title ever) were brought in from Arabia to carry heavy loads for early Outback explorers and settlers. But like all good introduced species, they’ve now kind of run amuck in the desert Outback and are slowly destroying the fragile desert ecosystem.
A few bucks got you a short camel ride, but I was too distracted with my dying camera battery to be seriously tempted to join. It seemed that half the thrill was just having the camel get on all four legs without flinging you off of it. Luckily, all the passengers I saw survived.
We also stopped at what can only be described as a car graveyard to scavenge for firewood. I couldn’t to help to wonder how these cars got to the middle of the Outback, why they were in the middle of nowhere, and what happened to the owners. Hopefully, they’re not dead out there with the cars.
Karma exists in Central Australia
So remember one day prior I sat next to a Swiss couple on a plane whom I was somewhat perturbed by? Well, the universe dealt me a funny hand when I stepped onto the tour tank and noticed a familiar looking older couple. The woman tapped me on the shoulder and said “Hi, you sat next to us on our flight!” Shit. I forced a smile. “Yes, hi! What a coincidence!”
It turns out they weren’t so bad. In fact, this group would be my favorite temporary family of all the tours I took. Here’s a 140 word Twitter-description for each of them:
Kurt and Simone – Aforementioned elders. Probably should have booked a less rugged tour but endured the adventure with only a bit of fuss.
Neil and Emma – Scottish couple. Consistently amused me with their accent and playful bickering. Wore sombrero & parasol to avoid sunburn
Ryan – an American(!) who lived and worked at a sailing school in Adelaide.
Frenchies – 2 quiet French dudes, never got their names. Once, I tried to parlais francais to them, got blank stares. Awkward. Wore jeans in desert.
Jan – German. Spoke to Kurt and Simone a lot. Took pictures of EVERYTHING. Promised the group he would send us his pics, I’m still waiting. (That’s him in the background of “The best purchase” photo…maybe I was just jealous he had a full camera battery…)
Frank the Tank & Axel, his exasperated bud – Germans. Frank is loud, life of party. Axel keeps him in check. They travel 2gether every year.
Andrew – Tour guide. Wise, silent type. Said a lot with few words. Had an enormous respect of the land and aborigines. Made me love Oz.
Fooluru.
That would be Mt. Connor, what you see about an hour or two before seeing Uluru. I wasted about 10% of my battery life on it. When all you've seen is flat desert plain for hours and suddenly see a giant rock jutting out of the ground from a distance, it's pretty easy to make that mistake.
Australia is young…
In the Outback, even in a touristy place as Uluru, you really do feel like you’ve stepped back in time to the 50′s. Things may be more developed than a third world country, but nothing feels refined like Europe or the US. It’s hard to describe, but it just feels like color television and cars were just invented there. Immensely charming.
And to really shock you, Australia became a country in 1901. That’s only a little over 100 years old. Think about that. Only two or three generations exist that can call themselves Australian. Australian History is more like “Current Events.”
Still ripe for development, wouldn’t you say?
…And still kind of racist.
Except that aborigines have been living on the continent for about 40,000 years. And for such an easygoing country, Australians really don’t have a great grasp on handling their affairs with the aboriginals. Kakadu introduced the point to me, but Uluru really drove the point home. It’s sad to see the mistakes of the US handling of Native Americans repeated in Australian history. Andrew told us stories how up until very recently, think 60′s or 70′s, white people in the Outback would shoot aborigines for sport and never get punished for it. The lack of understanding between cultures is immense, partly because the aboriginal culture is so closed off to non-natives. But they’re making a lot of progress, as Andrew observed.
It’s more than a rock to aborigines.
So after half a day’s worth of driving, we finally arrive at Uluru, and it really is a gigantic hunk of rock. Pictures really do it no justice in size. It was too hot to climb to the top, which upset Jan, Kurt, and Simone. I was upset that they would be so culturally insensitive as to climb what we discovered was a really important religious site for the aborigines.
As we walked around the base of Uluru, Andrew stressed the important of listening. It was this important skill that the aborigines used to survive in this harsh environment, and something people today could really learn to master. Jan, Kurt, and Simone weren’t really listening, it seemed, as they were wandering off and photographing everything, even though a good portion of Uluru highly discouraged photography as they were special religious points in aboriginal society.
Uluru's rock faces tell a TON of stories. Every cave, nook, and cranny was part of a narrative that was passed down as aborigines grew in age and wisdom. We as visitors were only privy to the most basic fables, but there are countless lessons and morals and stories to be told if you were an aborigine, many of them exclusive to a certain gender or age group.
Sunsets are better with champagne
As you go through rites of passage, you unlock more stories and knowledge from the rock. I guess I appreciated this more than others in our group, and now understood the desire of the crazy whiteys who try to integrate into aboriginal society…they just want to collect all the stories too. Kind of like Pokemon.
So after a good 2-3 hours or so of walking around the base, we rolled into our campsite. This campsite was more like a mega camp-site complex, with dozens of tour groups having their own designated areas. WayOutback seemed to have a pretty choice location sort of away from the madness at least. What was really nice though was we could walk up this hill by our campsite to an overlook that had Uluru and The Olgas (more on that tomorrow) in clear view.
With the sun about to set, Andrew popped open a bottle of champagne, poured us each a glass, set out some cheese and crackers, and we all toasted to being witness to one of the greatest sunsets the world has to offer with only 3 or 4 other respectful people outside our group to disrupt us. As Uluru changed every shade of red and orange to black, I wished my camera wasn't dead at the time.
Don’t get lost in the desert
One disadvantage of our campsite location being in the outskirts of the complex was that the hike to the bathroom was a good 5 minutes or so. And it wasn’t the most straightforward path either. Now all I needed was pitch blackness, a tiny headlamp, and a maze of campsites that all looked about the same (a campfire with people), and conditions was perfect to go find the bathroom and make my way back to camp. Suffice to say, it there was a good amount of panic attacks as I stumbled upon wrong campsites, mysterious roads, and bushes that probably had some snake ready to eat me. And when I finally made it back to the glowing fire of my group’s campsite, I was thoroughly scarred into ever leaving the group to find the bathroom by myself again.
The Milky Way really does exist.
Laid out in our swags in front of the fire, unlike Kakadu, I finally got to see the stars unobstructed by tent fabric. My first time seeing the Milky Way. Powerful stuff. Made me almost want to move to the country without urban lights just so I can look up at the stars every night and make up my own constellations (One day astronomy will recognize the vagina cluster, or penguin on an igloo constellation).
* Watching my fellow tourmates do the “Australian salute” throughout the day only magnified that sense of satisfaction. Newbies…