Take-Aways

I chose to fly the 1,500 km. or so that separate Darwin from Alice Springs. From 40 degrees the temperature inexplicably dropped to 17. Apparently this is an aberration for a place that is very nearly a dessert. It is surprising how civilised a town in the middle of nowhere can be. Orderly, with the politeness of a Cotswolds village and all the modern conveniences it also manages the feat to evoke a city out of a Western, local saloon and all. Alice Springs is mostly a tourist town and the gateway to Australia’s heart, Ayer’s Rock or in the preferred Aborigine name, Uluru. But there is more to it than that. It is also a base for the Flying Doctors of Central Australia and the proud address of a reptile centre (which I moderately enjoyed) and a baby Kangaroo hospital (which I absolutely adored and could have spent days in). In the Kangaroo hospital volunteers offer to hug little motherless kangaroos to imitate a mother kangaroo’s pouch in the wild. What happens is that kangaroos often feed off the side of the road where the grass is greener and regularly get hit by cars – accidentally I hasten to add. Because of the way a Kangaroo jumps more often than not they get hit on the head and therefore, if there is a baby it can potentially stay unhurt in his mother’s belly pouch. These babies can be rescued and raised if kept close to a breathing surface, namely a human’s stomach. I went in the morning and paid for the privilege of serving as a mother Kangaroo. A definite highlight! Later in the day, with my 13 person group plus 2 tour guides we headed for our three and a half day excursion into King’s Canyon, Uluru and Kata Tjuta ending in Yulara from which I am meant to fly onto Australia’s Greece, Melbourne. This is the true outback, the backbone of the Northern Territory and it holds a particular and holy significance to the Aborigines of the region. Uluru and Kata Kuta are two monoliths testifying to Australia’s intense erosion history. After endless kilometres of flatness they emerge to offer relief from the unchanging landscape. Flat and symmetrical as though it was baked in a cake mould, Uluru offers am iconic image of Aboriginal Australia. Riddled with sacred sites, paintings and stories that men cannot tell to women and women cannot tell to men it changes its mood according to the sunlight. The base walk around it is about 9 km long and very easy. It is possible to climb it but we are kindly asked to choose not to do so to respect Aborigine culture. They only got the land back by promising to keep it accessible to tourists and since they cannot forbid, they respectfully ask. Kata Tjuta, in clear contrast, is a fruitcake assembly of rocks – the name means many heads in Aborigine – dramatic and a bit cartoony. The walks there are more spectacular and challenging and the relief more intense. It is wrapped in a cloud of mystery as no Aborigine stories can be shared with us here. The three and a half days sees us driving in a Green bus nicknamed “Kermy” with a loud and extremely endearing Queensland cattle station gal and her Brisbane but no more urbane right hand trainee. Swags are the order of the day and sleeping under the stars becomes a habit I no longer want to give up. As for the “barbie”, I am increasingly wondering why humanity bothered to invent all the other methods of cooking. Anything on charcoal simply tastes amazing. The closest town to these magnificent sites is Yulara. To call it a town is probably optimistic. It is a totally artificial construct that has 3 swanky hotels and a campground, a shopping centre, a free shuttle bus circulating between them and another free shuttle bus to the airport. It’s a Utopia with a 2,000 population town that nevertheless boasts perfect infrastructure: a clinic, a police station, a fire brigade and a school, right in the middle of nowhere! This is the Northern Territory or the final Australian frontier. To the South and East of it lies suburbia and Surfer’s paradise. Not that I will be going there. Next destination for me is Melbourne and the largest Greek colony outside of Greece.