Wanderlust Heaven!

Ayers Rock and the Olgas (nearby formations which basically look like 6-7 mini-Ayers Rocks) are among the most stunning sights I’ve seen – at least outside of bars and nightclubs. I took about a thousand photos and will share those at some point, so won’t get too deep into descriptions here. I can only say that Ayers Rocks (Uluru in Aboriginal local language) has my vote for monolith deposited on Earth by an alien culture. I half-expected HAL to communicate with me via ESP as I approached the Rock. It rises straight out of the ground, though scientists believe there’s about 4 square miles of rock under the ground – kind of like an iceberg. The base is almost 6 miles around, the height is about 1000 feet, and it’s just awesome. I walked around it in two hours, but didn’t climb it – the Aborigines are strongly against it, and their logic made sense to me. I spent some time in the Cultural Center, then went on to view the Olgas and hike around there. Again, well worth a trip there – will definitely go back there someday. One minor observation I had was that Ayers has mostly smooth rock, while the Olgas seem more pitted, and in some places almost concretized rocks. One fellow I met had climbed Ayers the previous day and said it was surprisingly slippery – there are falls and deaths from time to time.

Around noon, I got back in my car to race all the way to Alice Springs before the sun set. This drive was far less dramatic – no camels along the way. I did again see an enormous amount of roadkill…and when I reached Alice I went straight to a steakhouse for some wallaby shanks and emu fillets!

Alice is a strange little town of 25,000 souls, smack in the middle of the desert. There are various things to see and do – balloon rides, visits to Royal Australian Flying Doctor Service HQ, etc. – but I didn’t have much time. I had some glorified roadkill for dinner, then went to a pub to medicate myself and meet some locals. I ended up talking for a while with a woman who was of Tongan descent and had just moved to Alice to work in the local casino. We watched the rugby match – it was New South Wales vs. Queensland in the ‘State of Origin’ match which is a huge deal and which meant the bars were absolutely jammed…despite Alice being in the Northern Territory and thus not directly involved in the match. I suppose many people there were originally from, or visiting from, those 2 states. Or maybe it’s just the general love of sports that Aussies have. Anyway, the match was a rout (Q’land won 30-6) so we spent most of our time talking about various matters – mostly about how inept the US government is, and how the Aussie government is right behind.

It’s not easy getting to or leaving Alice. It’s the only sizeable town in the center of Oz, kind of like if St. Louis or Kansas City was the only ‘city’ between Chicago and Houston. It’s approx. 1,500 km from Darwin, my next stop – so I decided to fly out and not spend another day in a bus or train. Even when you’re unemployed and seeming to have all the time in the world, you can still be in a hurry. The world’s a huge place and sometimes I feel the need to see it all…which probably means I’ll die unhappy and dissatisfied. Oh well.

One final thing to note here, en route to Darwin – Alice Springs Airport has a pool table. And I managed to get in a game before I flew out.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 16th, 2006 at 12:08 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.