Jolly swag-persons

Sunday, June 26, 2011
The "Red Centre", Northern Territory, Australia
We flew from Adelaide to Alice Springs, and we booked a 3-day all-inclusive tour of Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kata Tjuta and King's Canyon for $440 each. If you didn't mind the driving, it would have been cheaper to continue up there in our rental car, or, as a middle option, fly up and rent a car for a week or so. The distances are great, and we spent about half of our time driving. Compared with what I expected, the roads are better (sealed all the way), the availability of accommodation is greater (from camping on up), and there are too many great walks to do in the time we had. Although Uluru is the name and image everyone knows, all three of the sites were equally brilliant.

There were about 20 people in our group, all except me younger than Frances . We had a great guide, Anna, who also did the driving, which would normally be the jobs of two people. She also walked most of the trails with us and gave us expert commentary, including on aboriginal culture. She was also a great motivator, because after Anna put out the food for each meal, we had to prepare our own meals and wash up. For each of the two nights we stayed at a campground with toilets and showers, and swags were provided for us to sleep in, under the stars. This is something like a mattress with a cover attached, and you stuff your sleeping bag inside it. There was just room for two not-very-big people to squeeze into one. The low temperature was close to zero each night, but in the day it got up to 20, with a strong sun. This was the season to do it, of course, because it would be brutally hot in the summer.

We spent most of our first day driving to Kata Tjuta, leaving time to walk only part of the circuit track before sundown. Next day at Uluru, the entry ticket respectfully asked visitors not to climb onto the rock . In fact there were signs at many places on the perimeter trail asking you not to even take photos. Anna gave us a thorough analysis of how extremely culturally insensitive it was to walk on Uluru, then asked, So, who wants to climb up? Three people put up their hands. Either they had paid too much to miss out, or their English was not up to the task of understanding what she had said. Later I asked her why the climb is not simply closed. It seems to be that a deal was made at some point with the aboriginal people of the area, and keeping the climb open was part of the deal because of a combination of a fear that closing it would cause numbers to crash, and the people's inability to assert their values. But this will be re-examined in the future.

This was my birthday. I started the day with a walk around Uluru, and ended it beside a campfire with a failed attempt to play the didgeridoo. I was practically the only one who couldn't get a sound out of it.
That night, we happened to be camping in a place that was infested with mice. There were dozens of them scurrying around everywhere. Three of the girls actually chose to sleep in the ablution block (remember, no tent). I put my glasses in my boot beside our swag, and in the morning a little piece of the plastic pad that fits onto the nose had been chewed away.

Of the three destinations, I thought King's Canyon was the most interesting walk. Then the long drive back to Alice Springs. We also spent a day in the town, which I had pictured as something like a western frontier town. In fact has the feel of an administrative centre (which it is) like Thompson, Manitoba, say, while almost every other town I've mentioned in the interior is more like a movie-set western town.

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