Weather: 37 degrees C / 99 degrees F
I didn’t want to wake up this morning. It was 4:30 AM! And either I was really dehydrated, or I was hung-over (I drank more with dinner). We woke up this early to see the sun rise over Uluru.
Shane from Discovery Eco-tours was our driver/guide again, so he was late picking us up. I was worried we would miss it, but he got us there with time to set up a nice little breakfast by the bus.
We watched the sun some up over the horizon and illuminate the patterns of rock on Uluru. It really was beautiful. Afterwards, I had to go “water the shrubs” if you know what I mean. To put it more accurately, I watered the termite mound (I found out later). But we both enjoyed the sunrise. I’m surprised we woke up this early!
After we were all satisfied that the sun was up, we headed out towards our “inactive tour” which apparently means that everyone on the tour was older, overweight, asthmatic, or a combination of all three. Shane explained the geology on how this rock was formed, which coincidentally enough, was the same way the other big rock we saw was formed. :)
On the inactive tour, we got closer to the rock known as Uluru. The guide told us stories on how the local Aborigine tribes would explain the
markings on the rocks. For example, there was a heart-shaped rock by this watering hole, and the locals told a story of a snake that turned into her human form and cried about the murder of her nephew by another snake, before slashing at it twice, killing it. It’s kind of like an aborigine soap opera … “Snakes of our Lives” … or something like that.The discoverers had a different explanation for the heart-shaped pattern. The discoverer, William Grosse, named the watering hole, Maggie Springs (even though it was more of a collection pool than a spring, but I digress). He named it Maggie Springs after his girlfriend, Maggie, who was waiting for him back home. When he returned, she had fallen in love with another and left him, so that is how William left his heart in Maggie Springs. (Sounds like another soap opera, doesn’t it?)
There were many things to see. Some of which we were asked not to take pictures of since they are sacred sites that some tribal people aren’t allowed to see. They are afraid the pictures would get published.
The things I was allowed to take pictures of were pretty cool. We saw cave paintings that could be dated back 4,000 years! Unfortunately, tour guides in the 60’s tossed water on the paintings to get them to show up better on the rock. They thought the paintings couldn’t be affected by water. They were wrong. :(
There were many caves, formed in a variety of ways. There were peaceful, shaded alcoves where you just relax and swat dozens of black flies away from your face.
There were alcoves where Aborigine women would prepare the seeds they collected. It was kind of like a pre-historic kitchen. This food made up 80-90% of the aborigine diet, so the women were the major providers for their tribe.After the tour, we went to the cultural center, which consisted of overpriced tourist crap. Hopefully, the money they make can go to the Aboriginal people who are still negatively affected by the arrival of foreign settlers.
After the gift shop, we made our way back to the resort, where we saw a bird on a chair and checked out the little shops and cafes they had. I checked the contents of the CD-ROM that was burned for us at Green Island and they put the wrong pictures on it!
Who is this??
We took a lunch break (pizza and fries at Gecko’s café, went grocery shopping for some fruit and water, and took a shuttle back to our “room.” (This little $10 tourist back-pack has come in handy)! :)
When we got back to the room, Hilary slept, but I wasn’t tired anymore, so I did our laundry.
At 3:00 PM, we took another tour of another rock in the middle of nowhere (called Mt. Connor).
Our tour guide, Ben, picked us up in his Toyota 4x4 along with Irene from Northern England and Michael, from Melbourne, Australia. I ended up feeling tired as soon as I got in the car, so I slept the whole way to Curtin Springs. I didn’t realize that Ben was giving us some interesting information and stories behind the area.
The Severin family bought the land (over 1 million acres worth) Mt. Connor resides on. He went there during a rain storm in 1954 and decided it was an undiscovered paradise, so he bought it for next to nothing! After that, it didn’t rain again for seven years! So to this day, the whole area is privately owned and contains no people! Only a campground and a cattle farm. This was the only tour that even goes to this area! Good find, Hilary!
When we got to Curtin Springs, we took a pee break and Hilary spotted cockroaches in the bathroom!
They also had one of Australia’s only cactus plants.
We saw some parrots that the owners have captured and then went on our way. We stopped along the way at a huge salt lake called Lake Amadeus? Ben explained about how the “lake” is one of many in in the outback and how the native people fear them. It dries you out! On a full moon, the tides pull the water to the surface and bugs are attracted to the reflections in it. They would then get preserved (a nice way of saying “died a slow, painful death”) for years.
We saw a nasty millipede ...
... and a praying mantis.
We took a few more pictures and quickly got into our vehicle, for our trip to Mt. Connor. We stopped one more time to take pictures before we got there (and to water the shrubs again) and I realized that if they
decided to leave me there, I’d be dead! The road back was long and red.
Instead of leaving me there, though, we took in more of the Martian-like scenery and were completely amazed by the secludedness and the beauty! It seemed like we kept driving on these bumpy dirt roads for miles and miles (or kilometers and kilometers) and Mt. Connor didn’t seem to get any closer.
As we drove, we saw various forms of life, included a Bull and, on the other side of Mt. Connor, our first Kangaroo I’ve ever seen in person!
We stopped again, walked around, and saw various cow paths and came across what looked like a petrified stump. It was actually the fossilized remains of the world’s first oxygen-producing amoeba, a stromalite. This is the proof that there used to be an inland sea in central Australia!
After that break, we got back into the 4x4 and drove up the side of Mt. Connor. Or rather … ½ way up. The panoramic view was amazing. The sky seems bigger out here because you can see so far on the horizon. On the way up (and on the way down) the ride was so bumpy because the “road” consisted of big rocks. I felt like I was going to lose my fillings!*** It reminded me of when we went off-roading in Hawaii, thanks to Jen and Dan! ***
We drove away from the mountain to find some more wild kangaroos and to see the sunset on the mountain. When we got to our spot, we saw one of the original settler’s house. _________ settled in the area in the 30’s during the great depression (before the arrival of the Severin family). He built his house in the ground, although now it’s filled in with soil. 
It reminds me of a hobbit hole. The man was lonely, so he put an ad in the paper for a wife. Sure enough, someone responded, they got married, and raised beef together on the land. He was often away from home, tending to the cattle, so she would have to keep up the house all in the wilderness with no one around for hundreds of miles in every direction.
We spotted some kangaroos! They were very calm in front of us as long as we walked closer when their heads were down. I’d say we were about fifteen feet from two of the red kangaroos. They are the largest of their species, standing at five feet tall.
After the kangaroos finally got scared off, Ben brought out some glasses and some champagne and we toasted our second sunset over a rock in two days. The rock changed colors every time we looked up at it.Also, it felt like we were walking on an ant colony, because there was crunching beneath our feet everywhere we walked. We stood still for a moment and besides the buzzing of the flies, there was complete silence. And this time … no one farted.
This was the ultimate outback experience. I couldn’t take in all the beauty at once. After the sun went down, we headed back to Curtin Springs for our steak dinner! Our cook was a funny, round man who always had a smile and a full glass of beer. His name was “Cookie.”The place where we ate had a bar that was right out of Crocodile Dundee (“you call that a knife?”) but everyone was very friendly.
On the way back to our “hotel” we saw owls diving for the bugs attracted to our headlights, foxes, and a family of kangaroos! I slept for the rest of the journey. It felt like today was two days. We saw the sunrise and the sunset. What a great experience.
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