Adelaide to Alice: The Outback

We arrived in Adelaide,a beautiful city ringed by parks, on Sunday, January 14, although couldn't return our rental car since the office had closed at 4pm. Luckily, we met up with our Servas hosts Brian and Chris at the office and were able to return the car the next morning; they said that the typical response to the office being closed then would be "that's Adelaide," with its reputation as a sleepy backwater city in comparison with Melbourne and Sydney.

Brian and Chris continued our experience of having great Servas hosts. Brian was a child in London during WWII, which he said wasn't scary to him but actually fun and exciting, with explosions and bomb shelters seeming like an adventure. He was sent to the countryside later in the war, and as a teenager became one of the "ten pound immigrants," those, many of them English but also many Greek and Italian, who paid a mere ten pounds for the weeks-long sea voyage to begin a new life in Australia. Referred to as "history's most successful voluntary migration scheme," it more than doubled Australia's population, which it felt was necessary after nearly being taken over by Japan in WWII.

The next day was the 6th anniversary of our first date, and we celebrated by seeing 2 movies (Little Miss Sunshine and Volver) and having a great fancy Greek lunch, as well as strolling through the botanical garden. It was nice to take a break from the usual tourist site routine and rest up for the start of our big tour: 7 days in the Outback from Adelaide to Alice Springs, with 18 passengers and 1 guide (a friendly, laid-back native of the Torres Strait Islands [off Cape York in Northeast Australia] named Kevin) in a big bus/van.

Leaving Adelaide on the first day of our tour, we drove through Australia's wheat belt. Farmers there don't use irrigation and so rely entirely on rainfall; because of the record drought this year most of their wheat crops yielded almost no grain and were harvested stalks and all as cattle feed instead. In less than a day's drive from the southern coast of Australia, we passed the "Goyden Line," the farthest point north that a 19th century surveyor declared wheat could be grown. North of the line is only suitable for sheep and cattle grazing. Later that day we also visited the Aboriginal Yourambulla Cave paintings. We spent the night in a hostel located smack dab in the middle of the Parachilna Gorge of the Flinders Ranges Mountains, which despite their relatively small size now (1100? m) used to be taller than the Himalayas. Going even farther back in geologic time, most of inland Australia was once a giant inland sea, and after that a dense forest, both of which are hard to imagine given the current vast, mostly flat arid plains.

On our second day, we made multiple stops to break up the driving: an ochre pit, a coal mine, a local eccentric named Talc Alf (for his talcstone carvings), the ghost town of Farina (Italian for "flour," the town was planned to grow wheat but never produced a single grain) and last but not least some giant "hippie sculptures" out of materials such as a windmill, small plane, and a bus. The ochre pit was the source of paint colors for Aborigines; those who collected and traded the ochre lived in the Northern Territory near Darwin and would walk over 2,000 km to reach this pit, and then carry back over 60 pounds of ochre on each of their heads for the return journey. That afternoon we saw a dingo cross the road, a dog-like animal that originally came to Australia from Thailand thousands of years ago.

Much of our drive on the second day (almost all on unpaved roads called "tracks") followed the route of the explorer John Stuart, who in 1862 became the first European to cross the interior of Australia, laying the way for the Overland Telegraph Line and then the steam engine train. The only reason that Stuart's expedition succeeded was the vast source of ground water, known as the Great Artesian Basin (which also provided the water necessary for the steam train). And the only reason he found this water is that the Aborigines (who of course, like with the ochre trade example, had likely been crossing the interior for thousands of years) showed it to him.

We spent the second night in the "town" of William Creek, population 6. It's the base for the William Creek Cattle Station, which with an area of over 22,000 square km is bigger than Belgium. It normally has around 20,000 cattle, but with the drought this year is down to just 1,000. No romantic images of cowboys on horseback here: the station is operated mostly by computer, and ranchers use planes instead of horses to cover the huge distances. Despite the high technology for ranching, a few of the locals at the pub proved to be slightly more stereotypical Outback residents, including one extremely intoxicated guy about my age who worked in a coal mine and had driven *6 hours* to come to the pub that night. Another interesting part of local culture given the Outback isolation is a one night "ball" held once a year where young people who may rarely see people their age where they live come from huge distances in the hope of finding a partner (or, as we guessed, just to have a good time). We drove past the grounds for one of these balls, which of course was now completely empty.

The rain began during the night at William Creek. A storm system had come down from tropical northern Australia and was pounding the outback in various places; it looked like the places we were heading were next to be hit. So the next morning, with our destination of Coober Pedy just 150 km away, we were forced to turn completely around to the next available paved road to avoid getting stuck. On our way, we passed (and actually nicked with our trailer) a rival tour company bus stuck in the mud. They were eventually able to get out by using the rail ties (called "sleepers") that are scattered next to the dirt road, remnants of the famous Ghan railway. The Ghan was named for the Afghans who brought camels to use for transport in the Outback desert after horses had failed. Australia currently has the world's largest population of wild camels, which we spotted several times as well as wild horses.

The rest of day three consisted of slightly scary, difficult driving over soft mud and flooded roads, (with some incredible views of ponds forming all over the desert), but Kevin successfully navigated us and the bus onto the paved road and to our stop in the town of Quorn that night. After a 4:30 wake up call the next morning, we were back on the road and by the middle of day 4 had reached Coober Pedy, the "Opal Mining Capital of the World": a day late and after 1,200 km of extra driving. The rain was still falling heavily, so much so that some of the hillside next to our "underground" hostel crumbled away. Because of its extreme desert environment, much of the town of Coober Pedy is built into the hillsides, where the opal mines were dug.

That night we went to an "underground" pub/club, and while Rachel and I were happy to go to bed early, unfortunately some of our group had other plans and managed to wake up not only our group but most of the other tour groups staying there by dragging one guy's bed into the hallway sometime around 3am, then staying up talking and laughing for an hour. (They also spent the whole next day laughing about it and refused to acknowledge that it might have been just a wee bit inconsiderate...). As I type this it sounds much funnier than it did at the time, and unfortunately this incident (and probably moreover the absurd amount of driving we were doing) led to a major rift in tour group dynamics.

On day 5, after driving most of the day, we arrived at Yulara, the accomodation area for Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock). Uluru is a huge monolith (all one rock, formed by the rest of the rock around it eroding) in the middle of nowhere, and a very sacred site for the Aborigines. The last few days of our tour unfortunately highlighted our leader Kevin's biggest weakness, timing (although again I'm sure he was exhausted from driving). After setting up camp we barely made it to Uluru in time for sunset, as we hiked past regular tour buses (first time we've seen them in the Outback!) to the lookout point. The sunset and Uluru's change of color with the light were impressive, but perhaps even better were the spectacular stars in the night sky, and the fact that we saw a comet that's even rarer than Haley's.

Day 6 was supposed to begin with a sunrise hike, but since Kevin and most of the group overslept we missed that. It was cool to walk around Uluru and see all the different formations in the rock, and learn a little about some of the ways parts of it were used in Aboriginal ceremonies/rituals. We definitely didn't want to climb it, which the Aborignals strongly urge people not to do but we saw several people doing anyway. When the Australian government finally "gave back" (in the form of a 99 year lease) Uluru to the Aboriginals in 1986, one of the conditions they required is that it remain open to climbing by tourists. In the cultural center, we saw the "sorry book" filled with letters from tourists who mailed back pieces of rock they took from Uluru, also forbidden by Aboriginal culture and supposed to bring very bad luck.

In the afternoon we were looking forward to hiking the Valley of the Winds in Kata Tjuta, another Aboriginal sacred site made up of a canyon and mountain formation near
Uluru. However, Kevin said it was too late and too hot, so instead we did a short hike, which wasn't great. After that we drove on to
Watarka (King's Canyon), a short day of driving at only 4 hours. That night the mood in the campground was a little better.

On our 7th and last day, we hiked through Watarka (albeit at an extremely slow pace for much of the way), which is formed by sand being pressed together so we could see the many layers of rock, some formed into beehive domes. There were also sides of the canyon that looked completely smooth from stone falling away. I swam in a pool in the Garden of Eden spot on the canyon floor, where giant cycads (ferns) from the time of the dinosaurs grew. Another of the amazing desert plants Kev pointed out was the ghost gum, a white-barked eucalyptus tree with the ability to cut off the water supply to one of it's branches if necessary in a dry time for the good of the rest of the tree.

Just as we've been reflecting more on political and cultural elements of the U.S. during this trip, on our trip through the Outback we found ourselves comparing the landscape to the West of the U.S.; despite the many wonders of the Outback, to us it just couldn't stand up to the majestic mountains and deserts we have at home.