Week numero TEN, ten weeks since we left Calgary, wow. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and that you have big plans for the 2010 celebration. I wish you all a fantastic year and may your endeavours lead you to great things. And let the warmth of your love ones keep you cozy this winter.
It has been a while since I last posted an article so of course a lot had happened but nothing is worth mentioning more than our trip to the Australian Outback. Geneviève and I booked a tour that would take us inland, where the climate is semi arid, where the sand in this desert is red (hence the popular name RED CENTRE to describe this part of Australia), where the temperature is often above 35 degrees and where we can visit ULURU (aka Ayers Rock aka Olga). We signed up for a tour and were very excited about being part of it. It was a little bit out of our budget but it’s either that or rent a car and drive the 30+ hours for a round trip. We did not regret our decision, we had a lot of fun visiting and partying with the same group of people for five days. We were mainly interested and excited to learn more about the aboriginal history and lifestyle and did we ever get a good load of that. I know I won’t be as good as our guide telling you everything there is to know about Uluru and the Red Centre so I would encourage you to research ULURU and find out more about everything relating to this majestic Red Rock right in the centre of this big country. I learned so much on this trip. It was quite unique to experience the Outback as the locals would, i.e. camping and sleeping in a swag under millions of stars. Our driver said it best: “this was not a five star-hotel, it was a five million star-hotel”. The best way to describe a swag is: a thick fabric case that would wrap around your sleeping bag to keep all the ants and other unwanted visitors (snakes!) out of your sleeping bag while you gaze and snore under the uncountable stars and shooting stars. Farmers and the cattle station workers still sleep this way today.
Back to Uluru. Uluru is the aboriginal name while Ayers Rock and Olga are the other two names given to Uluru by Europeen back when they “discovered” it. What’s unusual about this rock formation is that it’s in the middle of a desert where you drive for hundreds of miles and see nothing but red sand, kangaroo grass and occasional wildlifes then bang this huge rock is sticking out of the ground matching the colour of the red sand. The sand is red because the iron is left behind once all the other minerals were absorbed or evaporated – this was once a salted water sea. Over time, the iron rusted and gave the sand this colour. There is a lot of history and culture surrounding this Rock. Uluru is sacred for the aborigenese people and they have many legends and stories about this place. This also means access is limited when you visit Uluru, meaning you may only visit parts of the rock and photos may not be taken in certain areas. The aborigenese don’t want anyone outside their community to know what really goes on there. Although the popular belief is that aborigenese hold cultural ceremonies here and use this place as a teaching place for the youngsters. It is also believed that initiations and other gender specific rituals are being held here, for example: the boys would be branded here before they become men and the women would give birth here.
It is also possible to climb up Uluru and walk the rim of it (it’s a circular shape rock). Being avid hikers, Gen and I really wanted to climb it. But although the climb is open to the public, the aborigenese do not encourage it. They are proud people and they really want to educate the “white man” and share with him their culture and lifestyle but there is a limit. And since this is a sacred site, they really did not wish anyone else would go up. But the climb is still open to the public as part of an agreement they had with the Australian government in return for keeping their land. As Gen and I learned more about this very interesting culture and history, we felt closer to them. We also thought we should respect their wish and not make the climb up Uluru, even after travelling thousands of miles to get there. It would had been cool to go up but in this case, respecting an entire culture and its history, and abiding to their wish is a simple no brainer.
There is so much more to this place, take a couple of hours and google “Uluru”. You won’t regret it.
My other highlight of the trip was a champagne sunset by Uluru. Part of the tour was to get up at 4:30 am to go snap pictures of Uluru at sunrise, then to come back at night to watch the sunset. Only, we celebrated with champagne! That was so much fun to just have a good time with everyone on the tour. I am pretty sure most of us missed the sunset once the champagne started pouring :)
Following the tour, we booked a bus out of the outback to go back to civilization. We overnight in Coober Pedy where 70% of the population lived underground. This is a mine town, they dig for opal. It is the opal capital of the world, 70% of the world’s opal come from Coober Pedy. People here live underground because it is to damn hot above ground, that’s why! Below the surface, the temperature is always the same so there is no need to adjust your body during the winter or summer months. Pretty smart, I thought.
Then we made our way back to Sydney where our trip started over one month before and where we would complete our Aussie journey. The plan was to fly to New Zealand on December 22. We bought a one way ticket to Auckland (New Zealand) but little did we know we were required to have a ticket out of New Zealand before they would let us fly into Auckland. So we scrambled around at the Sydney airport for a few hours trying to purchase any type of ticket out of NZ. We got that done with a great help from a Qantas Air angel, Aussies rule!
Thank you all the people we met in Australia for your help and for being part of our journey. We truly enjoyed our time with you and your country. Special thanks to Terry and the Stoddart family, you guys made our trip even better!
