The Outback

We flew in to Ayers Rock airport on Sunday morning, and met up with our tour operator, Connections Safari. We were part of a group of 8 campers, on a tour of the highlights of Australia's "Red Centre". We started the day with a tour around the Olgas. These are basically a group of rocks formed by some complicated geological process involving being rolled around under water, with lots of pieces of different rocks being stuck together (or something like that). They're of very important spiritual significance to the Aboriginal people of the area, for whom they play a big role in ceremonies involving initiated men and women. After a tour of the Olgas if was off to Ayers Rock (formed by a similar process) for a sunset viewing with champagne (we had some newlyweds on the tour).












Day 2 began at 5:30am, with a quick breakfast in the dark, and then off to Ayers Rock to the see the sunrise. One of the magical things about the rock is how different the colour appears at different times, from dark orange, to glowing red, to pink and purple (and that's just what we saw in 24 hours). The sunrise was cold, but really beautiful. After that we did the 10km walk around the base of the rock, reading about the Aboriginal stories associated with different formations on and around the rock.

Stewart (our guide) explained how the Aboriginals found food sources in some very creative and unexpected places. One example is the witchetty grub, which is essentially a moth larva, found cocooned in the roots of a witchetty tree. As we were driving along to our campsite, he pulled over, found some witchetty trees and proceeded to dig. The search yielded 3 grubs, which were eaten by Stewart, Pierre (a French chef on our tour) and Brian. You have to bite the head off and eat the body. He said it tasted a bit sweet, and really wasn't too bad at all, but I was definitely not eating one!

On our second night, we had a traditional Australian bush dinner cooked in pots placed in the fire. Stewart turned out to be an excellent Didgeridoo player, he brought out his "didg" while we waited for dinner to cook. Brian took a turn, and he shows real promise (Chris he's thinking the two of you will form a band). On both nights we pulled our camp beds out of the tent and slept under the stars. I've never seen so many stars, it was just amazing. After dinner we couldn't wait to get into our sleeping bags and stare up at the sky, watching for shooting stars.











On our final day we went to Kings Canyon, which is part of a mountain range made of sandstone. It's thought that, as with the rest of central Australia, it used to be under an inland sea, and you can see ripples and some fossilized jelly fish in the sandstone. The 6km canyon rim walk took about 4 hours as we stopped to take pictures, and to hear about local culture and myth from Stewart. After that it was a long bus ride over BUMPY dirt roads back to Alice Springs. Along the way we saw lots of brumbies (wild horses), wild camels (introduced in the 1800's for transport in the desert) and donkeys.