Alice Springs and a 3 days adventure in the desert

The first two days I spent in Alice to get used to the outback central australian sun and to experience some real aboriginal live today. It’s not exactly a big town, filled with history and aboriginal people relaxing and socialising in the parks as part of their native culture. Besides of all that and the sun of course it looks like any other australien town. I went to see the old alice springs goal (prison), well there are two of them in alice (one closed in 1938 and the other one in 1996) and saw an exhibition about early woman pioneers in australia, interesting stuff though.

Day 1, Kings Canyon:
The next morning at 6am I started my 3 days tour to Kings Canyon, Kata Tjuta and Uluru. On the tour I made new friends with Goska from Poland, Dario and Sandro from Italy, Chris from Scotland and a bunch of english. The first day we drove about 400 km out into the desert to see Kings Canyon. Usually the desert really looks like a desert as you would imagine Australia with red dust and some dry trees. Cause of the heavy rainfalls the last weeks nature showed a different image, really green and paradise like oases. In just one month it rained the amout of a whole year. After about 2 hours of walking we took a cool bath in one of the waterholes in the canyon, very refreshing. The temprature out here at this time of the year is just 35 to 38°C otherwise it would be about 45°C.
Later that day just before sunset, we had a flat tyre, brilliant… that’s my second time in the desert and both times that happend…hmmm. Well it was more of an exciting case than danger and everybody took pictures, while some others went to get some beer for tonight.

The camp was close, Ringa our guide prepared the supper with some of us, while the others made a fire with the wood we picked up just before. Everybody got a swag (waterproof sleeping bag) and we gathered around the fireplace for food and sleeping under the stars. After a long chat with Dario about italian and austrian food and two beers I was finally tired enough to go to sleep.

Day 2, Kata Tjuta and Uluru:
Morning appell 5am … breakfast … rolling up the swags… and getting ready to move. This day was really challenging, filled with walking in Kata Tjuta (valley of the winds), visiting the cultural aboriginal center to learn about the local tribe, a short walk at Uluru and finally a shower to refresh. We finished that day with watching the sunset over Uluru and supper followed by buying art from local aboriginal women. At night we got to our todays camp sleeping under stars again and listened to Ringa singing an aboriginal lullabe and some other camp songs we sang.

Day 3, Uluru and Camels
We got up again really early to watch the sunrise over Uluru while having breakfast and as soon as the sun was out the attack of the flyes started again and won’t finish till sunset.
And because we didn’t walk enough we finished the walk around Uluru. This rock is just amazing, beautiful and filled with interesting sanctuary places and stories. The local aboriginal call the rock home, they used to live there, give birth, cook and tell their story to the next generation. Some of the places around the rock are closed to take pictures or even go there. Today the locals still practise ceremonies and ask people not to climb the rock and respect the nature. So I didn’t climb it, but left one of my small stones around instead.
In the afternoon we stoped at the camel farm just 90km out of Alice. I didn’t ride one, cause 5 minutes on a dromedar didn’t seem exciting at all and I had a better experience in Tunisa. But I read the history about this area, camel races, pioneers who crossed the desert by camel and the wild camels who live out there today.

We all got back to our backpackers and met again later in the rock bar for food and drinks. All in all it was a great experience to finally see the rock, feel it’s magic and energy, making new friends, walk in the heat, cover because of the flies everywhere, sleeping under the stars, see the light and beauty of the australien bush and aboriginal art and culture.

The day after, I decided to relaxe and stay around the hostel, say good bye to Goska, Storm, Dario and Sandro.

In the afternoon I joined Chris and the others to go to the triple j free concert in Alice. An amazing local event, well as I understood triple j is australia’s fm4 like radio station. Don’t worry I took some videos of it and had a great time beeing part of it.

Today I will leave Alice, just walked around once more at the sundays markets and getting ready for Darwin, my last stop in Australia before going to Bali. Sad already, I wish I could continue my travels, I’m not ready to go home, but also want to stay longer in one place, make a new home somewhere else, follow my intuition.

Gooday and I recon… tita