We were hoping the whole racism against aboriginals thing would go away here because this is where most of them live but we were advised by our hostel to take a taxi home from dinner which was only a 15 minute walk away because it's not safe at night. Don't worry parents, we took their advice!
Today we began our three day camping trip through the desert and guess what? You guessed it. It's pouring. Its not supposed to rain in the desert!! According to our tour guide, only 2% of people get to see Uluru (the big rock) in the rain so we're lucky! We'll see how lucky we are when we're sleeping in a puddle tonight :-/. Supposedly Uluru has 60+ waterfalls when it rains so hopefully that will be nice. Our tour guide also mentioned it only rains enough to fill the rivers three times in twenty years and guess what...the rivers are filled. At least the camels will have some water!
Ok enough about the horrible rain. By the way, from what everyone has been saying about the weather back home it's probably warmer there than it is here so I hope you're all warm and happy over there!!
We made a few stops on our 6 hour drive to Kata Tjuta National Park. First we stopped at a camel farm to see some camels. So many camels! Lots of babies too. I guess they were imported from the middle east back in the 1800's so the settlers could cross the desert. Oh! Someone asked me what the name of the desert was and I said Alice Springs Desert...way wrong haha it's called the Simpson Desert. Anyway we saw camels, alpaca, llamas, vicuña, and some other camel/llama relatives.
Then we stopped at an aboriginal art gallery. Google aboriginal art and you can see what it looks like. This whole trip we've been wondering what the funky designs on a lot of the souvenirs were and turns out its aboriginal art. They paint from a Birdseye view, so concentric circles (is that the word?) represent bodies of water (like when you throw a stone in a pond) and "U" shapes represent people sitting. It makes so much sense now! Also, I'm thinking maybe the aboriginals who live by the rock are civil (the aboriginals own all this land and the parks and the Australian government rents it from them or something), but the ones who live in the city and towns (Perth, Alice Springs), are the violent ones? Our cab driver told us the ones in the city live under trees and beat people up and that going to jail is a better life than the one they live so that's why the violence continues? He also told us Alice Springs has more police per capita than anywhere else in Australia but it takes two hours for the cops to come when you dial 911 (well, 000 here) so who knows.
We reached Uluru late this afternoon and took a walking tour around the base. It's pretty cool, there is nothing for miles and miles and then all of a sudden there's a huge rock. You can climb it sometimes but not when it's hot, wet, or there's thunder and not during the summer months. Of course today is the first day of fall in Australia (summer is over :-( ) so we could climb it except it's raining. Uluru has all kinds of spiritual significance for the aboriginals and it's 900 million years old so they discourage people from climbing it. Visitors can't take pictures of certain areas and certain paths through the rock are blocked off from tourists. There are all kinds of cave paintings on the rock, kinda cool. I don't entirely understand the stories about the rock...they're like our fairy tales I guess but they believe they're true...google it if you want because they're a little confusing!
Unfortunately we didn't get to see all the different colors of the rock because of the rain but we did get to see waterfalls! The rock is red but changes color as the sun hits it at different angles. We drank champagne and watched the "sunset" from a lookout this evening...we couldn't see much but I imagine it's really pretty when there's sun!
Oh a couple more notes about the weather: this is the coldest summer Australia has had in 50 years, our tour guide hasn't seen real rain here in 11 months and last week it was 132 degrees. Good news is we don't have to worry about getting sun burned!
We're now laying under the stars and sleeping in our swags. We didn't realize until yesterday we would be sleeping outside...oops. It's a little chilly but our swags are warm. A swag is like a sleeping bag on a mattress rolled up in a canvas. You know the Waltzing Matilda song? It's by some famous Australian guy and I guess it's about him singing a song to his swag that he named Matilda and she waltzes behind him on his back as he walks. Popular song out here!
Hopefully no scorpions try and snuggle with us tonight. There are some cute kangaroo mice running around tho that I wouldn't mind cuddling with!!
No comments:
Post a Comment