It's a big big rock

Uluru:
Ancient
Monolithic
Sacred

A sandstone remnant of a mountain range long since eroded away.

Red at sunrise and sunset, brown in the afternoon, silvery-grey when it rains.

Standing 348 metres high and measuring 9.4 km in circumference.

9.4 kilometres exactly, actually, and I should know because I walked it.

So, LRD seems to have forgiven me slightly. He's finally climbed out from behind my mountain of Terry Pratchett novels and has slowly inched his way across the living-room floor to my desk. Either all is now well or he's just curious to see the photos.

Sunday morning, after only 3 hours sleep, we rose and drove from Yulara into the Uluru - Kata Tjuta National Park to the sunrise viewing area for Uluru. Just us and a couple of hundred of other people watched the first strikes of sun turn the rock red. Uluru is sacred to the Pitjantjatjara people of the area, who gained land rights over the area in 1985. The land was then leased back to the Government for 99 years and is jointly-managed.





Photo: south-west side of Uluru

After sunrise, we trekked round the base of the monolith (takes about 2 and a half hours) before heading off to Kata Tjuta, otherwise known as the Olgas. Kata Tjuta is Pitjantjajara for "many heads" and its series of large domed rocks do look like many heads. The Olgas are also sacred to the Pitjantjajara people but while Uluru is primarily a tourist attraction, ceremony is still undertaken at Kata Tjuta.

Photo: Inadequate shot of Kata Tjuta.

After finishing our walk into the heart of Kata Tjuta (we were far too tired by now to do the Valley of the Winds walk) we barbecued some lunch and drove back to Alice Springs.

And drove...
and drove...
and stopped for icecream...
and drove...

And when I finally got back to Alice Springs I curled up in my lovely king-sized bed with five pillows and a view of the McDonnell Ranges and I slept.

Great weekend.

PS: Oh, and on Monday I saw the sights of Alice Springs: climbed Anzac Hill and went to some art galleries.

The Lonely Road

So, Little Red Dave refuses to come out from the bookshelf: he’s currently sulking between a copy of My Name is Red and my as-yet-unread copy of War and Peace. (Hey, have you seen the size of that thing? It’s on my to-do list...for the last 10 years). Apparently LRD’s still despondent over the whole Uluru thing and, coming on top of me going to Kakadu without him earlier this year, I think he’s waiting for some sort of grand apologetic gesture. I’ll try to write up my trip without rubbing salt in the wound too much.

I flew down to Alice Springs on Friday and checked into the Comfort Inn Outback, nestled in the McDonnell Ranges. 5am I was up and 6am I was on the road as the sun rose over the surprisingly-green landscape. I had booked a tour with an Adventure Tour company so it was just me, about 10 European tourists, who were all about 12, and two older English women so at least I had someone to talk to. [Yes, Dave, it would have been better if you had been there. I called this post 'The Lonely Road', didn't I? No, don't hide behind the Terry Pratchett novels. I'll never find you again.]

Photo of Alice Springs from Anzac Hill

And we drove....
and drove....
and stopped for a coffee...
and drove...

Kings Canyon is about four hours from Alice Springs but of course, by the time we got ourselves together and stopped for breaks, it took us 6. We grabbed a barbecue lunch and then drove to the canyon itself. The walls of Kings Canyon are over 300 metres high, with Kings Creek at the bottom.

Against my better judgement and possibly against sanity, I decided to do the 3-4 hour Rim walk with the rest of the group...at 1:30 in the afternoon in 37 degree heat. The walk itself is fantastic, if far too hot to be doing in the heat of the day, but the first part of the climb, Heart Attack Hill, is the most challenging. Once the steep ascent was under my belt, the rest was comparatively easy. Afterwards, we stumbled down the mountainside, piled back into the car and drove...and drove...and drove...arriving in Yulara about 9pm. We set up camp, we ate barbecued roadkill and then hit the sack. Literally: I have never been so tired in my life.

Photo: Heart Attack Hill. It's much higher than it looks.

Photo: Lilliput, so named because it looks likes a miniaturised version of the Gorge itself. One can imagine tiny people, just like ourselves, walking through it and looking up at the sheer walls.

Photo: Garden of Eden

Photo: Walls of Kings Canyon

Mea culpa

Dear Little Red Dave

You know I love you, right? I mean, I did dedicate this entire somewhat thematically-confused blog to you, because of my love (and not at all because it gives me an excuse not to publish photos of myself). So I know you won't take it personally that I went to Uluru, the iconic world heritage-listed image that defines Australia for so many, and left you on my bookcase in Darwin.

I know, you'll say there are photos of you at the Great Pyramids of Giza, the leaning tower of Pisa and the Taj Mahal. I can lug you across Europe and Asia but when it comes to my own country, I consistently forget.

I can only hope you accept this apology and stop sulking behind my copy of The Hogfather.

Mea culpa
genfie



PS Here's a photo so you know just what you missed

The Dave Files: Part Something or Other

Apparently there's a rumour that this blog was supposed to be about this "bear" called "Little Red Dave", affectionately known as LRD or even just "Dave". In honour of this, a photo from the Dave Files just to remind us all why we're here.

This photo was taken in the beautifully-restored city of Dubrovnik in 2001, probably about May. After trekking up through Northern Greece, through Macedonia and Kosovo and then moving down through the glorious Montenegro I arrived, broke, in Croatia. Restaurants, ATMS, other tourists, local men looking down on me because I was a poor backpacker and wasn't dressed well enough: all the trappings of modern civilisation again! As I took a taxi from the border through the mountains, the cab driver stopped to give me a wonderful view of the city. I'll also attach this photo, although it doesn't do the view justice. It was taken on an old film camera and then scanned and has lost a lot of resolution in the process.

I absolutely loved Croatia and didn't stay there long enough. Firstly because I had had to leave Montenegro because I ran out of money (yes, I actually went to Dubrovnik just to use the ATM!) and went back there as soon as I'd cashed up, and secondly because I was racing to get to Italy before the peak tourist season. If I'd known that it's always peak tourist season in Italy, I wouldn't have taken the freezing ferry from Split and would have made my way to Zagreb instead. Still, beautiful country. Would love to go back.

My inspiration for post titles is gone

The Wet is here! What happened to the build-up? It just never really happened. I'm disappointed actually. There's nothing better than a steaming day with the pressure building minute by minute until it finally breaks in a spectacular electrical storm. It seems to have gone from the Dry straight to raining. I find it not a little ironic that while Darwin is experiencing so little storm activity, Brisbane is being wiped off the map with its worst storms in like 30 years.

Haven't been moving around too much lately, mostly due to work and Uni. I have finally finished the great all-consuming research project, the popularised version of which is in a post below. I also spent the last two weeks in Nhulunbuy (Gove Pensinsula, north-east Arnhem Land) doing some work at the indigenous community of Yirrikala. It was not the most successful trip but it was great to see a part of the country I would probably not see otherwise. Here's a photo of Nhulunbuy from the lookout, which is on a Yolgnu sacred site nearby.

I also managed a short trip to Galiwinku, an indigenous community on Elcho Island and the home of Gurrumul Yunipingu. They've recently had a festival there complete with the Chooky Dancers, Saltwater Band and Gurrumul. Wish I'd been there to see that.

Wisdom teeth: is there a better argument against intelligent design?

My teeth hurt. I mean, my teeth really hurt. Not only do I have two wisdom teeth floating in my sinus cavity pressing against bundles of nerves, but one is currently engaged in an attempt to move all my other teeth slightly to the right to give itself room. The pain is constant, the pain is grinding and, while the pain is not overly bad at times, its persistance is enough to drive me into a slow insanity.

And as I sit here, doped up on painkillers that seem for some reason not to be working and contemplating all those aspects of our physiology that are now redundant due to the great force that is evolution, I ponder how anyone could believe in creationism or intelligent design. I mean, seriously, God thought, "I know, four useless teeth" or, "how about an appendix?" Useless, painful and possibly deadly. Yeah!

Just a thought.

Yes, this was worth a blog entry

http://www.xkcd.com/

The Myth of Walkabout

As I now have a new blog devoted to my more academic opinionating (hey, English is an evolving language; if I say it's a word, it's a word and I'm hardly going to use the more accurate 'pontificating', am I?) the Myth of Walkabout has now been moved to a more appropriate location at http://www.galtha.blogspot.com.

Has the LHC reactor destroyed the world?

Has the Large Hadron Collidor destroyed the world yet? What do you think? Let me know.

LRD thinks the world is a figment of his imagination, which is why he gets all the food and drink he wants and I carry him everywhere. Yes, in Little Red Dave's world, he is God.

This Balanda had a great night

The tourists have left, the streets are emptier and the Danish cyclists are no longer taking their lives into their hands on the roads. Yes, the Dry is almost over and as the humidity starts to slowly build up, Darwin is saying goodbye to the cool weather with the Darwin Festival: 14 days of music, theatre, art and food in the Botanic Gardens.

Last night was the NT Indigenous Music Awards at the amphitheatre. After a day spent recovering from the extraordinary amount of alcohol I consumed the night before (I drank 4 beers and 1½ bottles of wine, talk about a walking advertisement for the dangers of binge drinking), I was just well enough to make myself down to the Gardens (photos below).

The Awards were a load of fun, although not particularly well organised (my favourite moment was when they asked one of the bands to come back on stage and found they’d already left). The highlight of the evening was the Chooky Dancers, sporting a bit more co-ordination than in the past. If you haven’t seen their YouTube vid yet, check it out. These guys are talented and irrepressible. They naturally performed Zorba the Greek and it was just as entertaining as expected.

The hero of the evening was without doubt Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu from North-east Arnhem Land who won four major awards, including act of the year and album of the year. In case you've never head of him, Gurrumul sings in Yolgnu and has been blind from birth. I own his solo album and it is beautiful.

The band B2M from the Tiwi Islands was named the emerging act of the year and are probably hoping that Boys2Men never hear about them.

Overall, a great night.