17/04/13

I'm sat on the bus on day 2 of the tour from Adelaide to Alice Springs with a mild hangover. But this hangover is one I don't mind, because the cause involved a fire and meeting new people. The perfect end to a fantastic day! So, let's start from the beginning, I'll try not to miss anything out. I woke up yesterday at 6am, and I didn't feel too tired because my body clock's still in farm-mode. I had breakfast in the kitchen with 2 Welsh girls, thought they might be on my tour but they were getting up for work. Felt kinda bad rubbing that one in their face, but there was a woman in the kitchen who said she was going on the tour. Sue. Now, when I was talking to Sue, I assumed she was early 40s maybe? 59. Sue is 59 and on my tour. I was worried what age group this tour was designed for, but that worry was eased when I jumped on the bus at 6:45 to a bus of backpackers with a few anomalies. These include Sue, obviously. Amber, probably about 60 from the states, Steve who I think is about 35 and Pete. What a legend. 68 Year old, pipe smoking, beer guzziling, one eyed Pete from Keynsham, Bristol. Somerset! Always good to have a fellow countryman on the bus. I'm at the back of the bus with the oldies and feared they'd be my only friends on this trip (don't worry, a box of goon and a fire made sure that didn't happen!) We had a few stops along the way so it never really seemed like we travelled far. I think I had an hour kip at some point, and then we arrived at the campsite for lunch. Wraps. I had 2. After lunch, we went to what's called 'Devils Peak' for a climb. About 790m above sea level, not a huge mountain, but getting up it at the speed that Oli, Louis and I did it in certainly took it out of me. 2nd up and 1st down cus I'm a competitive person like that, the view at the top was awesome. We sat there for about an hour, taking in the view before clambering back down to meet those who turned around half way up, including Pete who offered me a beer. I'd basically just ran down a mountain. Of course I'll take a beer! We headed back to camp to pick up Amber who stayed behind and then we went to Hancock's Lookout for the sunset. Sid, our tour guide, wasn't too hopeful about the quality of the sunset but boy was he wrong! It was phenominal. When we got back to the camp the fire was already going and the other group were there. This tour is quite a big one, so there are 2 busses going up and I think it's pretty safe to say we have the better tour guide. Sid is the stereotype of all Australian tour guides, and that's a good thing! Long, sun-bleached, blonde hair, a very relaxed attitude, and really easy to get on with. But the other tour guide, I can't even remember his name, is very regimented, splitting his group into 2 making 1 cook and 1 clean. Sid cooks and just told us we have to make sure everything's clean, very easy going. After dinner, which was a BBQ (winner) the other tour guide was constantly talking about himself and I don't think the German guy he was talking to could understand a lot of it, or even care about it. I couldn't tell. Oh yeh, the nationalities; British, American, SwissFrench, SwissGerman, Belgian, Chinese, German, French, Dutch and that's just our bus! A good mix, and quite a few German talkers so I'll get some practice in! I can hear my Dad asking 'any hotties?' Yes Dad, there are a number of attractive girls on this trip. The fire and drinking went on until about 1am which left Me, Sid and Charlotte as the last standing. Charlotte comes from Belgium and has a Mancunian accent which both amuses and baffles me. My sleep exceeded expectations as my bed for the night is what's called a 'Swag'. Which is like an external sleeping bag with a hard base and soft on the bottom inside. It was reaaly comfortable and I look forward to the nights in the outback with the stars because your head is exposed. So that was day (and night) #1. We've been on the road for about 2 and a half hours, currently driving through the worlds largest military restriction zone. "If you go further than 50m from the road in either direction you are in federal violation" Sid informed us. Cool! I almost forgot to write another couple of interesting facts, the first couple maybe not so interesting, the Australian landscape is over 500 million years old and since 300 million years ago is has changed very little, the Flinders ranges, where Devil's peak is, were once as tall as the Himalayas and have just been eroding since then, also the reason why central Australia is very flat. Millions of years of being submersed in the ocean followed by millions of years of dry climate and wind has formed this landscape. The Australian desert is unlike the Sahara due to its massive amount of vegetation, and therefore wildlife. Again, over millions of years these plants have had time to adapt and evolve, unlike the Sahara which is only a few thousand years old. It's like being in a live documentary on this tour. The last, most interesting fact stems from my love of language and words different languages have which have no direct translation. 'Kopftkino' in is the word used when you have mental images of something, 'Ohrwurm' again in German is the word for when you have a song stuck in your head, but last night I learnt a word in Dutch 'Swaffel' which is to 'slap ones penis across somebody elses face! On that note, I think that's enough for one day, I'll get back to the desert.

18/04/13

Day 2 in my opinion wasn't as good, but day 1 was awesome so it's gunna be hard to beat! We got up, had breakfast and left at 7am, this was too early for a belly full of goon. I eventually had the chance to correct myself with a coffee flavoured ice cream and a peppered steak pie. We stopped for lunch at 'Billie', had wraps and got on the road again. The most interesting part was probably the facts, we saw plenty of wildlife; Emus, Wedge tailed Eagles and Flies, so many flies. The wedge tailed eagle is the largest bird on the planet in terms of wingspan, which can reach 3m! Because of their huge wingspan this means they can only take off into the wind. We drove some more and found ourselves at a salt flat, a dip in the landscape where the leftover salt from the inland sea has collected and constantly growing when more minerals get washed down when it (rarely) rains. I tasted it, and yes, it was salty. When we got to Coober Pedy it was about 4pm and I was shattered. Coober Pedy is an opal mining town which was formed after WWI in the heat of summer, to avoid the heat, they dug their houses out of the rock. Most of the residents still live underground and make new 'houses'. We went on a tour of the mine which started with a very 90s video of how it all started. There were quite a few interesting points, but this was all boring compared to watching a woman cut, grind and polish a rock. I jest of course, this was boring as f***. The tour itself was cool, seeing the actual mines and houses. We took all our stuff off the bus and into the bunkhouse, an underground cavern with dorms split by curtains. The day wasn't over, as we climbed on top the hill which our dorm was under and watched the sunset again, it wasn't quite as spectacular as the night before, but I had a beer and we had pizza for dinner as the sun went down. Perfect. By this point, I was really ready to go to bed, but we had 1 more thing to do; Go to the kangaroo orphanage. I'd seen the orphanage on helpx and only realised when they introduced their helper for the week. The roos they had were quite old, but extremely soft compared to the other kangaroos I've felt. Oh, but they did bring a baby around to show us and I'll admit, it was cute. We headed back to the bunkhouse and as I went to brush my teeth and sign off for an 8:30 sleep, my social side of my brain had other ideas. There were 4 of us left at 11pm, it wasn't exactly a heavy one, but we had to be up at 5am. Okay, fact time! The outback has pools of water underground left over from the inland sea. There are approximately 33 million Olympic sized swimming pools worth of water down there. That's quite a lot. Now we're driving from Coober Pedy to Uluru, I probably won't write much about today because we're just driving but this morning, we got up and left before 6am, this was to get to the breakaways, a rock formation from where we watched the sunrise. It was spectacular. There was another rock just to the right of where the sun rose from which gave the whole experience a real outback feeling. We had breakfast there and this is where I am for the next 9 hours, sat on the bus. We had a shuffle around of seas on the bus, last night Sid decided to move the bus around, he says he does it every time, but I think it's because he had the quiet group at the front. Now I'm near the front sat next to the Mancunian Belgiun with a few other talkative characters.

19/04/13

Yesterday was the day with the longest drive. 10 hours of nothing but desert, straight roads and more desert. Fortunately, time at the front of the bus seemed to go significantly quicker than the back, I don't think I've enjoyed a long car journey that much before in my life. Turns out me and Charlotte get on really well. Near the middle of the journey I got out my laptop for an hour or so of German, with 2 Germans sat behind me and Charlotte, a German speaker, it was good to have people to ask if I was unsure about anything. However, because the software is pretty basic and goes over the same stuff over and over, we spent a lot of the time laughing about how stupid it is. "Hier ist ein Stift", "Hallo?, Hallo!". We stopped for regular toilet/petrol breaks and for lunch at a roadhouse. The flies are such a killer, absolutely everywhere, almost intolerable, but thanks to the farm, I'm probably a bit more tolerable than others. As we were driving along, there, in the middle of the desert was a massive rock. Then we saw the writing on the window above Sid's head "<- Not Uluru". Ah, okay. It's what's called 'Atilla' and has indigenous significance, as does everything around here. We carried on, along the desert stopping in the middle of nowhere. What the f*** are we doing here? Collecting firewood! Me and Steve, who I found out was actually 45, pulled a tree out of the ground and we were told to be careful not to get cut, these trees are toxic. TREES?! Australia, you crazy! A couple of people did get scratches which cleaned up pretty easily, I got a splinter. Nothing to cry about, you think? My hand started to swell up and it was really quite painful. I took it out and it subsided quickly though. We got enough wood to fuel a fire for days and carried on, arriving at the campsite at around 5ish. We dumped the swags, got the boxes off the trailer and headed up to the lookout for the sunset. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention is how red the dirt is! What you see in the brochures is exactly how red it is, I just hope my camera brings out the colours enough.

...

23/04/13

What a f***ing incredible week I had. You can tell how good it was because I didn't have any time to write this up at all! This will be all over the place, but I'll try to put it in some sort of order and not miss anything. So, here goes! Picking up where I left off, we were able to see Uluru and the lesser known partner; Kata-Tjuta from a lookout on the campsite. This was a fantastic view and we watched the sunset behind Kata-Tjuta. In true tour fashion, we had dinner, made a fire and drank until the early hours, every night was the same. When we wrote in Sid's tour book, one of the sentences that sums up the trip is: "Every night staying up drinking with you at the fire was a mistake, but one we'd gladly make 100 more times" We'd hit the hay at 1ish and get up at 5 for the sunrise. The next day we headed to Kata-Tjuta for breakfast and to watch the sunrise. 'Kata Tjuta' in Pitjantjatjara, the aboriginal language of the Uluru area, means 'Many heads' as it essentially looks like many... heads. Very practical naming. It's a men's only area and we headed off to walk in and around the heads. We grabbed breakfast at the start of the walk. We walked in and around the peaks, arriving at the base of 5 of these 'heads', there was a clearing which the Men used to practice hunting, the elders would scare kangaroos and other animals into the area, and watch the boys try to hunt from a ledge higher up. I know this probably sounds boring, and I should be writing about how massive these rocks were and how beautiful the scenery was and actually how green it was too! They'd had rain recently and like most life in the area as soon as rain hits, they take the opportunity to thrive. Walking around the area was phenomenally overwhelming, these giant rocks moved by the force of water millions of years ago, very different to how Uluru was formed, but I'll get to that! The ?Cutchiba? stories are fascinating and I have an enormous amount of respect for the indigenous people of Australia after learning about how they survived, their methods and how they used every plant, bad and good, to their advantage. One example is using the aforementioned toxic Mulga Tree with their spears to slow prey down. When we got back from the walk, we had some free time and so, in the heat of the day, we all went to the pool. It was good to have some down time and relax. I probably should have slept, catch up of many lost hours, but it was too hot anyway. I really can't get across how awesome our group was, this was the day we went from being a group on tour and started being a group of friends on tour. That night, or maybe the night before, I can't remember, but when we were by the fire, after quite a few beers, I showed Sid and a few remaining others the goat scream compilation. This quickly spread around the bus and before you know it, it was our theme for the bus. This and 'Team Alpha, HU HU HU!'. I realised something again that I realised first time around that despite how I view myself, that I'm actually quite a main character when put in a group of people. Why? Tjakka, that's why. Tjakka is Pitjantjatjara for "It's just the way it is". An incredibly Australian word and an ancient way of saying 's*** happens, you just have to deal with it'. We visited the Uluru cultural centre in the evening before walking around the rock, this was interesting, but I couldn't help falling asleep for 20minutes in the quiet room where they were showing an informational film. After this, we went to 'Sunset Carpark', the place where EVERYBODY get's the pictures of the rock. It is THE postcard shot, the sun setting behind us is meant to make the colour of Uluru change colours and be spectacular, I couldn't echo the sentiment, suuuuure, it changed colour, but it wasn't anything as drastic as people had made out. The next day it was time to walk around the rock, when we walked around Kata Tjuta the day before, a very hungover Sid used a stick to draw in the sand and explain how the landscape was formed. Uluru, even though it looks the same as 'Atilla' is formed completely different. Atilla is a mass of harder rock, standing strong whilst the softer sand around it eroded over time. Uluru on the other hand was formed when a fault occurred, twisting and turning a section 90 degrees. You can see this by the way the lines run vertically instead of horizontally. The left side of the rock is millions off years older than the right hand side. I'm probably underselling that, but I found it fascinating at least. We stayed as a group through the first part of the circular walk, Sid spilling knowledge about the cultural significance of everything, how the rock is 'Cutchiritcha' which is evidence of their 'Cutchiba', every mark, notch, nook and cranny on the rock tells a story with high moral values. With this in mind, I would love to talke a walk around the rock with an aboriginal guide, someone who knows some of the stories, but as it happens, for the walk around, we split off and go around at our own pace, and let's just say Charlotte isn't an aboriginal guide so the walk was just a walk around a giant rock. The area, as I said, is surprisingly green and in parts, mainly the shaded parts, it would be easy to sit by this giant natural wonder and relax, if it wasn't for the bloody flies! After the 9km walk around the base, we headed back to camp for lunch and to pack up. We had 1 night left and it dawned on us that soon, our little group would be split. Charlotte, 'Lou-Lou' & Estelle (the FrenchSwiss who were in front of us), and Rapha & Saskia (the German's behind us) were probably the closest friends I had on the trip, but this will not be the last time I see a few of these faces, but I'll get to that. We drove to King's Canyon, stopping off again for wood, cutting my finger on some Mulga which still hasn't even slightly healed. We got enough wood to fuel a week long constant burner and I nearly passed out. Carrying heavy wood only 20m and passing it up onto the trailer made me feel really feint in whatever heat we had in the desert. For the next hour or two, I wasn't much fun, couldn't concentrate and staying quiet, just trying to rehydrate. I eventually perked back up and the bus ride to Kings Canyon took no time at all. We got there and this was the last night, we all knew what we had to do and without any umm-ing or ahh-ing, I had a fire going, people were chopping vegetables for dinner, the swags were off the top and the bags out the back. We took a short walk to watch the sunset and it became apparent that the sunsets had gotten worse and worse each trip. The night was also relatively tame in comparison, but after 5 nights of it, we were ready for an early one. This 'early one' was still 12oClock and we were still the last few by the fire, but the hour made the difference. I woke up just before Sid put the music on and when it started, I knew it would be a good day. "NYAAAAAAAAASENYANGA... SEYAME TUWANAAAAA...." The next 4 songs were all from the lion king soundtrack and had me fully pumped for the day's activities, we were able to leave our stuff and jump on the bus after a quick breakfast. We arrived at Kings Canyon just before sunrise, we were lucky to get there in time and I practically ran up what is known as 'Heart Attack Hill'. I almost died at the top, but it was worth it, the sunrise was good and the way the sunlight was creeping closer on the flat lands behind the canyon was very 'lion king'. We were walking around, Sid, again dropping the knowledge on the place and this was a spectacularly beautiful walk, a few water holes and a pride rock style peak made a great photo opportunity. We got to a spot where Dan, the other tour guide asked for the 2 most manly men from each bus. The group fell silent, I volunteered Louis but the group had other ideas, putting me forward, I gingerly stepped forward shouting "TEAM ALPHA, HU HU HU!" This was an aboriginal test of manliness, there was a bush which looked hardy as hell and Dan announced for me and Andy, probably the least many guy from the other group to kick it from either side. I assumed it would be like a rock or that both of us would counteract the force and hurt the other one more, something along those lines, turns out it's just itchy as f***. We got back to the bus at about 11am, drove to the campsite for lunch and got the van ready for the final journey to Alice Springs. I slept for a bit of the journey, receiving obligatory marker on the face. But then we sparked up a conversation with Saskia and Rapha: Wasen. In September, there is a Bier Festival in Stuttgart called 'Wasen', I'd heard briefly about this and heard it was like Oktoberfest but less touristy. This idea grew and hopefully there will be a few of us meeting up in Stuttgart in September! We arrived in Alice Springs and as people were dropped off, we weren't saying our goodbyes. Like all good tours, we were to meet up and have a few drinks in the evening. We went to Uncle's tavern for food and they f***ed it up. Food came out at different times, some not receiving theirs for up to an hour after the first had come out! It wasn't a classy joint, we didn't expect a lot, but it was really bad, Sid complained, those who had theirs late got upgraded and got it for free, we had a few free jugs of beer and there were a couple of extra plates, so I had 2 steaks, plenty of chips and free beer, I'd say it worked out for the best. We moved on to the next bar 'Annie's place' and carried on drinking, but we were all a bit tired and called it fairly early. Saying goodbyes to those who were leaving. Oh! I forgot to mention, earlier on, because we were such an awesome group and Sid genuinely had a great time with us, he told us about a meteor shower which was happening Monday night and that we can take the van and the swags, have a fire and watch the shower. This was the plan, and it was annoying that it didn't work out as expected, but the next day. (Yesterday, I'm almost caught up!) We went to Uncles for lunch, a better experience, and met up ready for this. We ended up going to a water hole for a swim, a fantastic place, awesome bus journey. It was like the party bus in Sydney, just unplanned. Dancing in the aisle and on the seats. When we got to the water hole it was great, nobody around and freezing until you were in. You remember Sue, the 59 year old? She went skinny dipping. Crazy motherf***er! She didn't even mind people taking pictures, fully out of the water. CRAZY MOTHERf***ER! Another fun story from the waterhole involved Charlotte, Carla and Eliane posing for a photo, feet in the water (fully clothed, having not gone in), sparking a splash fight and a dunking of Carla and Charlotte. But Eliane wasn't going to get away with it, picking her up, I sprinted into the water for a full dunking. The bus on the way home was more drinking and dancing, the secret seventh day on tour was the best. Got back to the hostel and shared dinner with Louis and Estelle, we walked to Annie's to meet the others and after a few drinks there and a few at another bar, we walked up Anzac hill to watch the meteor shower. Didn't see a single one. But the company brilliant and a nice way to round off the week. Now, with most people continuing their travel from the airport yesterday or today, our numbers slowly dwindle and I am all set to jump on my tour tomorrow to Darwin! It has a lot to live up to, but there's a guy in my room who has just come off it and he's filled me with hope.