Dr.Unk's Office... in the Territory

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September 24, 2006

Big update

So it's been a while since I've posted and it's mostly due to how busy the last couple weeks have been. Essentially I worked my last couple of shifts at Bo's (I'm taking a month off), my parents arrived in Alice Springs, me and the Bo's gang rocked the Henley on the Todd (bottomless boat regatta), I took the 'rents on a tour down to King's Canyon and Uluru/Kata Tjuta National Park, then we flew to Adelaide and toured the Fleurieu Peninsula before cruising the Great Ocean Road to Melbourne. So you can see how little time I've had to both upload pictures and talk about what I've been doing. Taking pictures has also been the priority (more than 500 in a couple of weeks) so it'll take some serious internet time to get caught up on uploading.

Here are some updates in order then:

Henley on the Todd: A great charity event that has been going on for years. The major river that runs through Alice Springs is the Todd River, which happens to be dry almost all of the year and sometimes for years straight. Nevertheless, this was not enough to stop some Territorians from starting a regatta. It just happens to be a bottomless boat regatta where teams of competitors carry their boats to a buoy and back....buoy - read barrel. Tons of fun with sand skiing, sand shovelling, tug-a-wars and other events adding to the day of fun. Being Australia, there is of course beer involved all day long, which lead me to have no complaints with the event. The day wraps up with a battle between three giant warships launching water balloons, high pressure streams of water and explosive fired sawdust munitions that can only be described as a wet, dirty, drunken melee that would have made Nelson proud.

Driving the Mereenie Loop Road: This is an outback road that starts near Hermannsburg (site of an old German mission and home to Albert Namatjira, a famous Aboriginal artist) and sometimes requires a 4x4 to make it through to the highway near King's Canyon. Luckily for us, it never got too rough except for some heavy corrugation in parts. We cruised through it in style thanks to Shane and his wife who had lent us their Landcruiser for the trip. Along the way we stopped to check out Gosse Bluff, the remnants of a crater created from a comet colliding with the earth. We cruised on and eventually made it to Kings Creek Station where we were staying for the night, my parents in a safari tent while I swagged it underneath an old desert pine.

King's Canyon: A beautfiul early morning 6km hike. This is what I convinced my parents into undertaking. I had heard that there was an initial climb called 'heart attack hill' but had no idea what it actually represented. I may have assumed that it was a big exaggeration as my tour guide roommates did mention that there were stairs to use. Boy, was I mistaken. It was indeed a large climb, albeit over stairs that were cut and constructed into the rocks in the hillside. At this point, I was reintroduced to my mother's fear of heights. She was fine once we reached the top of the canyon but wasn't terribly comfortable with any part of the climb where you could see a dropoff nearby...essentially all of it. But she soldiered on, kept her eyes on the stairs in front of her and made it to the top without a falter. Good on her! It was well worth it cause the views from the top were incredible. A breathetaking 300m to the canyon floor and a section called the Garden of Eden where the diversity of flora and fauna was brilliant considering we were still surrounded by desert. After we completed the trek around the canyon we popped back into the Landcruiser and headed south and then west on the Lasseter Highway to Curtin Springs Station where we would be spending the night after heading to Uluru for sunset.

Uluru and Kata Tjuta: We drove 90km from Curtin Springs to Uluru to catch the Rock at sunset. We were a little early for it so we stopped in at the cultural center and then took the circuit road that encircles the Rock. The picturesque views that everyone typically sees of the Rock give you no indication of its actual dimensions. It's huge. Not only in height but in footprint as well. You see the pictures and don't realize that it extends far back behind what you treat as the face. It's a 10km walk along the base trail that surrounds Uluru. It's also freaky cause with the exception of some boulders here and there it is one single rock... which explains its title as the world's largest monolith.

A few stops for pictures and taking in the magnificence and we headed to the sunset viewing area. This is the spot where everybody gets the pictures of Uluru that you see in magazines and tourist brochures. Now that's not a terrible thing cause they do turn out to be incredible pics especially if you can catch all the different nuances of colour that dance in the shadows as the sun disappears over the horizon.... poetic oui mon cher? What you do have to put up with are tons of other tourists taking in the scene. We stopped in the tour group and coaches (buses) area cause Nat had a tour there so we met up with her. There were at least 1000 people in this parking lot in the middle of the desert, all there just to watch the sun go down over Uluru... mindblowing. My roommate Panky was there with a group as well and he reckons that one night it was so packed there woulda been 4000 people there!

A nice dinner with the folks at Yulara (the resort that services Uluru and Kata Tjuta) and we went to Nat's campsite to meet up with her. I ended up crashing there for the night and sent my parents on their first solo adventure - driving back 90km to Curtin Springs after dark. They managed quite well, avoiding hitting a kangaroo and timing the drive better than a little rental car which hit a black steer several hours earlier just outside Curtin. They returned for me in the morning and we had a coffee round the campfire and set out for Kata Tjuta.

Kata Tjuta means many heads and is as mysterious as Uluru. The largest of the formations is 200m taller than Uluru. All this and the two formations are only 40km apart... in the middle of the desert. We had some breakfast at the viewing area and then headed in to do the 'Valley of the Winds' walk. It was a 7.4km hike that I mistook for a walk. I had no problems with the difference but after convincing my parents that it was just an easy walk in the park compared to the previous days canyon hike, they were not impressed... or at least my mother wasn't. But again, she pulled through like a trooper...good on her! The views were impressive, the rocks were incredibly unique. You did not need any knowledge of geology to recognize that fact. The giant hills rose out of the ground at incredible rates and looked like giant termite mounds or beehives. They seemed to be composed of a natural cement - thousands/millions of smaller rocks held together by a reddish iron mortar. Like many parts of Australia that I've seen it was a foreign, almost extra terrestrial-like landscape.

After the hike, we headed back to the cultural center at Uluru for a picnic lunch. To finish off a big day we went on the Mutitjulu walk (yes, an actual walk, no hills or hiking involved) to see a waterhole in the shadow of the Rock. Along the way we saw Aboriginal cave painting as well as sacred sites involved in the Dreaming (Aboriginal base for religion, law, behaviour and education).

We drove the 5h back to Alice Springs mostly along the Stuart highway. One night back in my own bed was the only rest I'd get though cause the adventures continued the next day with a flight to Adelaide...

Posted by Dr.Unk at September 24, 2006 12:12 AM

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