Month: August 2004

So yes, I’ve now made the pilgrimage to Uluru (aka Ayer’s Rock) and I can tell you that it is absolutely amazing. I wasn’t really expecting it to be, of course. You tend to develop a bit of cynicism about these tourist attractions after driving hundreds of kilometers. But Uluru has certainly been worth the trip. Just think of a rock almost the height of the old World Trade Center towers encompassing an area around the size of lower Manhattan. I’m pretty sure, anyway. It’s a six mile / 10 kilometer hike around the thing. It dwarfs everything around it and you can’t see the top of it from the hiking trail.

There are black stains running off it where rivers of water flow when it rains (since rocks can’t absorb water). It actually struck me of being like the moon, because you can’t get away from it. It is so big, iconic, and prominent that it seems to follow you wherever you go — just like a really large full moon skirting along the horizon as you’re driving down the highway, keeping its same position as everything else scoots by you: No matter how fast you go or how many trees or buildings you pass, it’s always in the same position just looking back at you.

Driving right up to Uluru it is one of the most awe-inspiring experiences. Of course, the big show comes when the sun goes down and it lights up bright orange. That’s when everybody whips out their cameras. As tacky as this might sound, it’s lots of fun to hang around in the designated positions waiting for the right moment. It seems everyone there has a story to tell about how they got there. Being in the middle of Australia in the middle of nowhere, it’s a big trip for everyone. There is a real pilgrimage feel to the experience. Many are people who’ve spent their entire lives in Australia and were just making their first visit.

To be honest, there is another rock formation in the same national park that it even more impressive: The Olgas. The Olgas may not be as iconic or symmetrical as Uluru, but they are actually much larger and more interesting to wander around. There is a nice 3-4 hour hike around them that is really beautiful with the red sand and wildflowers in bloom at the moment.

In addition to these attractions, there is also a beautiful range of mountains running east and west of Alice Springs (a bit of a drive to the north) called the MacDonnell Ranges that are full of gorges and canyons. I spent one night camping at a beautiful gorge in the West MacDonnells before going to Uluru for a few nights, and another night camping at King’s Canyon (which I believe is Australia’s biggest canyon) afterwards.

The entire area has been freezing for camping, but I’ve been surviving just fine. I know the temperature dropping to at least 0 Celsius (32F) the first night I camped at Uluru, but it is an area that is known to drop down to -5C in winter. It’s funny because I had one last balmy night camping at Wycliffe Wells, and then the next night I was freezing in the MacDonnell Ranges.

Kings Canyon was quite spectacular, but no Grand Canyon (of course). There was a 3-4 hour rim hike that was quite interesting and grueling. Unlike the Grand Canyon, where you hike down in to it and then back out, the King’s Canyon had to be climbed first and then climbed down. I think the movie Priscilla, Queen of the Desert ended up there, but I’m not absolutely sure.

The coolest part of King’s Canyon were the little oases caught in some of the crevices of the rocks. They said there were plants there that had used to grow more widely in the area 100s of millions of years ago when the climate was vastly different in the region — but those plants have managed to survive in these pockets of water the canyon catches.

Greetings from the center of Australia: Alice Springs (aka “The Alice”). I’m having to deal with rain for the first time in 3 weeks. A bit of a shock, but kind of nice. I’m just not looking forward to camping in it.

I’ve been doing mostly driving since I last wrote, but I have had some fun along the way. Many sections of the drive were quite beautiful with bright red soil and wildflowers.

Darwin turned out to be a pretty nice place to hang out in afterall. It has a very modern and cosmopolitan feel to it with plenty of nice restaurants and beautiful tropical gardens overlooking the bay. On Sunday and Thursday nights they have a big international food festival on the beach which includes lots of fabulous eats from around the world. It seems to be the place everyone decends to for a nice dinner while they watch the sun set over the Timor Sea.

The thing I disliked most about Darwin was the camping. Like most of the tropics, it’s always very hot and very humid. You lie in your tent sweating into your pillow in the evening waiting for the temperature to cool. And then in the morning you wake up cool, but drenched from the heavy tropical dew.

From Darwin I cruised down to Elsey National Park, a nice little spot with hot springs and plenty of places to swim with freshies. I camped there for the night before heading down to “Devil’s Marbles,” an unusual formation of giant marble-like red rocks. While visiting the area, I camped in nearby Wycliffe Well — a spot that claims to be the UFO reporting capital of Australia.

The owner of the caravan park there was quite eccentric with lots of half completed projects he was hoping would attract hoards of people to his middle-of-nowhere — including a lake (still being filled), a zoo of animals (including kangaroos, emus, camels, rabbits, birds, etc), and a 300 seat dinner theater (which looked vacant on a Saturday night). The one little project that seems to have garnered him attention was all the UFO murals and figurines around the place. Otherwise it was a pretty nice place. The only problem with sleeping behind roadhouses is having to deal with the noise of 54 meter (4 trailer) long road trains racing by in the middle of the night. They sound like airplanes trying to land on your tent.

I am now going to head west into the Western MacDonnell Ranges for a few nights of camping before heading south to Uluru.

After a few days of hiking and kayaking up and down Katherine Gorge, I headed a bit north to spend a few days in Kakadu National Park. Kakadu is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as is Shark Bay (around Denham and Monkey Mia in Western Australia) and Uluru (or Ayer’s Rock, where I will be heading next). I have to say that I was a bit cynical about the place when I first arrived, but it has turned out to be one of the coolest national parks I’ve ever been to. It is absolutely brimming with wildlife.

Visiting Kakadu was like taking a step back in time, thousands of years, long before humans infested the planet. I hesitantly did another crocodile tour through a wetlands area at a leprechaun-like ranger’s insistence at the gate. This time I did the cruise at dawn (whereas before I did it at dusk), and it was an absolutely magic experience. There were thousands of very active exotic birds singing and flying all over the place in flocks. We saw about five crocodiles lurking just below the surface of the water keeping warm in the cool morning air. There were beautiful (and harmless) snakes hanging off of trees. There were jumping fish, and wild horses (brumbies) and water buffalo in the distance, and much more. All this could be seen within meters of leaving the dock. It was especially beautiful with the thick morning fog lingering over the open water areas. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. What you saw looked like one of those natural history museum depictions showing every kind of wild animal illustrated together from a specific environment, altogether in one painting, purely for informational purposes. But this was the real thing and it was all taking place before your very eyes.

This morning I did a walk through a rain forest area way up north (about as far north as you can drive in Australia on paved roads). I saw hundreds more bats, or “flying foxes” as they call them here, and also plenty more exotic birds and rock wallabies. I also stopped at another wetlands area on the way out of the park this morning and I felt I could have just sat there all day watching all the activity. There were continual flocks of birds hunting and flying back and forth. It’s amazing to think that it was only the 80’s when we stopped calling them “swamps” and filling them in.

In addition to all the wildlife, the whole area is very rich in Aboriginal culture. In fact, the whole park borders an “Arnhem Land” area to its north that is off limits to non-aboriginals without special permission. There were a wide range of Aboriginal rock paintings in caves around Kakadu National Park that were believed to be thousands of years old (as some of the paintings depict long-extinct animals).

The camping was great, with really nice personalized sites and access to hot showers. It’s a bit post peak at the moment, so there was plenty of space to spread out in. The only problem with the area was the heat and bugs (flies all day, mosquitoes all night). It was very hot and dry there, but every river you came across was accompanied by large crocodile warning signs.

Overall I feel like I’ve really been rushing this trip. I can see why most people take six months to do it. I could have easily spent at least a week in Kakadu and more time in places like Kununurra and Gregory National Park.

I’ve now arrived in Darwin, which ain’t much to write home about. It’s probably the size of Allentown or Lancaster, PA. At least I was able to get myself a nice Chinese meal this evening. It is their “dry” season here at the moment, but it sure feels hot and humid to me this time of year. It monsoons up here at “The Top End” all summer long. It is a bit cooler and breezier than Kakadu National Park was, anyway. Darwin is surrounded by beautiful ocean, but I’ve been advised not to swim in it because of saltwater crocodiles and killer box-jellyfish (even though this is their off season). It’s seems crazy with the heat. People up here say “I won’t swim in it unless it smells like chlorine.” It does seem as though everyone has a pool.

Darwin was practically obliterated on a few occasions — once due to Japanese bombing in World War II, and another time due to a big nasty cyclone in the seventies. I will probably check out all that historic stuff tomorrow. I will stay here two nights before making a beeline for Uluru (about 2 or 3 days drive south of here) cause my time is running out.

So I’m off into the wilderness again. Kakadu National Park, anyway. For a few nights of camping. Then I will check out Darwin and have to start peddling home to Perth as fast as I can.

The Katherine Gorge was lots of fun. There were some rough hikes down steep drops into the gorge, but you always had the option of a refreshing swim when you got there. Even though there were crocs around, the National Park people said it was safe for swimming if you followed a few guidelines and stayed clear of a few areas. Freshies, you see. I spent this morning kayaking up and down the river and taking lots of swims. It’s very hot and the sky is a very deep blue (like Perth in January)

As for wildlife, the wallabies at this place were all over the place. And way too tame. There are so many wallabies here that have been fed, unfortunately, by tourists, that they actually come and harrass you at your camp site. They come right up to you and beg for food while you are eating. At least they appeared to be, but maybe that had something to do with there normal stance as wallabies. The rangers warn you not to feed them, but they can get very aggressive. I was eating a banana at one point and threw the peel on the ground with the intension of picking it up when I was finished. A few wallabies in the area started twitching their noses when they cought a wiff of the fruit, and slowly started hopping towards me. I immediately put my foot with my big hiking boot on top of the peel, but one of the wallabies grabbed at a scrap of it that I failed to cover. He started angrily pulling on it in a tug-of-war with me until I finally gave up and just let him have it. He sat there stripping off thin little slices of the peel, eating it slowly while I sat just a few feet from him.

And then last night I could have sworn I saw a bunch of bats flying around. Sure enough, this morning I found hundreds of fruit bats hanging off a big tree in our campground, making a lot of noise and grooming themselves. It was an amazing sight.

I’ve now made my way to Katherine, Northern Territory, where I scored a sweet little camping spot in the Nitmiluk National Park (which is home to the famous Katherine Gorge). I will probably stay here a few nights and then start making my way up to Darwin via Kakadu National Park.

The drive from Halls Creek in Western Australia up through Kununurra (where I camped for a few nights) and into Katherine has been really spectacular. I did a wildlife cruise 43 kms down the Victoria River from Timber Creek, Northern Territory last night before camping in town. I will fill you in on the details in my Wildlife post.

Travelling around Australia has been very interesting because of the continual and gradual transitions in the wildlife. Not only do you notice the obvious changes in vegetation as you move from one climatic zone to another, the animals continually change as well.

One of the coolest changes I always notice is the birds singing before sunrise every morning. Every time you drive for 3-4 hours and camp somewhere new, you notice that there are always new birds in the area singing different tunes. Some of them are really beautiful and sing complicated arrangements that vary, but always seem to return to a common refrain. I think the birds singing in the morning was one of the first things that hit me when I first visited Australia in 1986. That first morning, you really knew you were somewhere completely different from home.

Other transitions you notice are with things like massive termite mounds, that are all over the place up here. I started noticing them around Coral Bay, but they’ve been everywhere ever since.

The Kangaroos vary as well. There is a smaller version known as a wallaby that you find up here in the north, but they are also much more plentiful. I’ve seen hundreds of Kangaroos and wallabies from around the time I left Port Hedland.

One of my coolest experiences with wallabies was when I camped next to Mirima National Park in Western Australia (outside of Kununurra) a few nights ago. Around 1:30 in the morning I was awoken by somethings that sounded like they were munching on the grass next to my tent. Being in the new area I wasn’t quite sure whether it was a lizard or what, but I was soon able to peek out of a crack in the screen of my tent that showed 3-4 little 2 ft high wallabies nibbling on the grass just outside of my tent only a few feet away. They were there for about an hour. I thought it was pretty cool. I must have plunked my tent down right in their favorite grazing patch under a gum tree.

When I was in Karijini National Park I didn’t get that kind of interaction with any wildlife — but I was warned to watch out for dingos. I was told they had a fetish for shoes and that I should be careful not to leave my shoes outside of the tent at night.

Well I never saw any Dingos at Karijini, but I did see one for the first time today as I was driving from Timber Creek to Katherine here in the Northern Territory. I was driving through the Gregory National Park when one came running out of the tall grass to start chasing my car — just like a dog. I immediately slowed down to a stop to try and get its picture, but it ran off across the road.

Last night was especially interesting on the wildlife front. I was getting a bit sick of driving and arrived in Timber Creek, the only town between Kununurra, W.A. and Katherine, N.T. About the only thing to do in Timber Creek was take a wildlife cruise down the Victoria River 45 km towards the Joseph Boneparte Gulf. It was supposed to be chock full of crocs, with an estimated 500 in the 45 kms of pure wilderness. I thought it sounded much more interesting than the numerous enclosed crocodile parks you stumble across, where you only see them in captivity and can watch them eat slabs of chicken.

The cruise was quite good, spanning about four hours at sunset — which made for nice picture taking. We ended up seeing lots of eagles, jumping fish, kangaroos, and about four crocodiles sunning themselves on the banks of the river. They eat mostly fish and kangaroos that come down to the river for an evening drink, we were told. The boat operator told us the kangaroos are very inquisitive and with get closer and closer to the crocs until it’s a bit too late for them to escape.

None of them were eaten while we were there because although the crocs were somewhat blase about us being there, the kangaroos would get scared of our boat and hop off back into the bush.