Reflections In A Crystal Wind*

14 March 2010

For a brief moment at 06.40 this morning it looked as if there might be a sunrise, a strip of red light on the horizon promised much but delivered nothing. The cloud quickly enveloped what little sunlight there was and we saw no more of it all day. Nevertheless we took yet more photographs of Uluru and set off for our walks – we had already walked 2.5km to view the sunrise that never happened so we were in the mood. We started a guided walk led by one of the park rangers but it turned out to be more of a talk about the Dreamtimes associated with the Mala myths and ceremonies, so we quietly slipped away and set off to the Kantju Gorge and very enjoyable it was too, again only another 2.5km but it took us about an hour because we stopped every couple of minutes to take yet more photographs. Obviously we were still in awe of this place. The gorge has some fine small waterfalls, especially after last night’s rain, and steep red walls with caves at the base, some of which contain rock art.

By now it was just 09.00, the flies were driving us mad (even with our face nets in place and long sleeves and trousers) we had walked 5km and it felt like lunchtime – the cups of coffee and marmalade sandwiches at 05.30 had not been terribly satisfying so we jumped in the car and headed back to the cultural centre in the hope of getting some tea-tree oil preparation the park ranger hold told us about which, allegedly, kept the flies away. They had none in stock but they did have carrot cake and flat whites – and so did we.
We decided to leave the long Uluru base walk until tomorrow hoping that there may be some sun and instead set off for Kata Tjuta, or The Olgas, as they used to be called but once again are now referred to by their Aboriginal name. These are huge domes of red rock which lie about 40km east of Uluru, and like Uluru rise dramatically from the ground and have the same intense red colour but there the similarity ends. Kata Tjuta is made from a sedimentary rock called conglomerate, which is a mix of gravel, pebbles, stones and boulders all fused together in red sandstone and the valleys and gorges reflect fractures that formed about 300million years ago. Chemical weathering by groundwater has widened the fissures and rainwater run-off has gradually formed the canyons and domes we saw today on our walk along the Walpa (meaning windy) Gorge. So even though we were only 40km from Uluru the place had a completely different geomorphology, a completely different flora but exactly the same bloody flies – only even more of them! It was quite a rocky track which required careful walking and demanded a few steep climbs as well as crossing a few streams but it was very enjoyable and we saw a number of different plant species – many of them in flower following all the recent rains. Near the end of the walk was a large water hole which reflected the gorge and had in it the biggest tadpoles we’ve ever seen.

Here the wind was quite strong as it was funnelled through the high walls of the gorge – we welcomed it not only for its cooling properties (even though there was no sun it was still very warm) but also because it seemed to blow the flies away. We had to return to the car by the same route and just as we neared the car park it began to rain quite heavily. We had hoped to do another walk along the ‘Valley Of The Winds’ but as the rain became heavier and as this route is frequently closed by flash floods we gave it a miss and returned to the Ayers Rock resort to write up the blog and catch up with the laundry.

On the drive home there were road signs warning of kangaroos – we didn’t see any but we did see a dingo and three camels! We weren’t hallucinating there are camels here – like so much else they were introduced into the country.

They were used a pack animals but as train and motorised transport took over they were allowed to go free to fend for themselves and have thrived.

Uluru

The Ides of March*
We took a shuttle bus from our hotel to the airport, after 30 minutes of driving around picking up passengers from other hotels we were almost back at where we started. We began to doubt if the driver knew the way to the airport. Fortunately he did and we eventually got there for our flight to Ayers Rock and on to Uluru – or Oooo-la-Rooo as the cabin crew announcer pronounced it (with the emphasis on the last ‘o’ with an inflection to make it a little like a yodel – try it for yourself.) We soon left behind Sydney and the fertile coastal region and began to fly over the desert, it was rather like the pictures that are sent back from Mars, except there is more evidence that rivers do occasionally flow here.

For the majority of the flight the sky had been clear with only the occasional wisps of cloud, as we approached our destination the cloud got thicker and greyer, with rain forecast – this is supposed to be desert, with rainfall of 250mm annually. However the abnormal weather patterns that we (and everyone in the UK) have been experiencing have happened here too. The region experienced a large amount of unseasonal rainfall which appears to have dramatically altered the lifecycle of the desert flora and fauna. So it is much greener than we expected but it also means that the flies, which are always a nuisance here, are in plague proportions and causing a great deal of annoyance – everyone is doing the “Australian wave” or wearing face nets – the place looks like a bee-keepers’ convention is taking place. Another strange fact: the time here is nine-and-a-half hours ahead of GMT.
The whole Ayers Rock resort (which is the only place where there is any accommodation) is all owned by one company which controls prices not only in the hotels but also in the few shops that exist, not so good but the up side is that it means that the number of tourists here at any one time is controlled, no one just ‘drops-by’ as the nearest town is about 450km away and between there and here and there are about eight farms one of them being about a million hectares. Anyway we picked up our car and decided that having come all this way we had to go to Uluru (the rock) immediately. We drove towards it in stunned silence. We had to use a word that is misused and overused (usually by teenage girls from the US) but on this occasion it was so apt – AWESOME! This iconic monolith has textures and colours (even without any sun) that no photograph can ever portray but it is its very presence and stature that makes it, without question, one of the world’s natural wonders. A friend described it as one of the earth’s energy centres and while we don’t go in for that stuff we know exactly what she means. AWESOME.
This one huge piece of rock has had the same effect on us as Easter Island had – we cannot begin to describe the emotions we felt – and still feel having walked around part of it and waited for the sunset (to see the colours change) that never happened but even through the car windscreen covered in rain it still exuded its magnificent presence. After the rain the air was heavy with the scent of the trees and shrubs.
The reason Uluru rises so dramatically from the flat landscape is that it is single rock – made of course grained sandstone hard enough to resist erosion. Its striking orange-red is the result of surface oxidisation – as we went around it whole new vistas opened up of chasms, caves, fluted rock patterns and water flows that have changed its colour. To its Aboriginal owners, the Anagu, Uluru is at the intersection of many “Dreaming Trails” which is a poor translation of the Anagu word ‘Tjukurpa’ which lies at the root of their religious and cultural heritage and is about Law – the Law of caring for each other and the Law of caring for the land that supports our existence. Tjukurpa tells of the relationship between people, plants, animals and the physical features of the land. Many myths, legends and stories exist for the existence of Uluru but none of them can undermine its vast geographical and geological awesome presence.

Tomorrow we are intending to be in the park at 06.30 to watch the sunrise...

Effervescing Elephant*

12 March 2010
Our plan for today to visit Taronga Zoo in the morning and come back into the city in the afternoon and visit more places. Once again the plans went haywire – we caught quite an early ferry over to Mosmans Bay then the Sky Safari cable car up to the top entrance of the zoo where a most charming lady gave us detailed information about the Australian marsupials, animals and birds (including kookaburras, galas and cockatoos plus the Victoria Crowned Pigeon which weighs in at 2kg and is bright blue – imagine one of those on the broccoli at the allotment!) that we might see on our “Australian Walkabout”. This was a separate part of the zoo which gave us the opportunity to see koalas, kangaroos, wallabies (including one with a joey in her pouch), emus, platypus, Tasmanian devils and many others the names of which we had never heard before and sadly have forgotten now, except there was one called, we think, an echidnas. We also got to see some of the very poisonous snakes that are native to Australia – of the 15 deadliest species of snakes in the world, eleven of them are found in Australia. It was the koalas though that fascinated us they just hang around the trees nibbling eucalyptus leaves and sleeping. We found out the reason for this behaviour – ‘koala’ is an Aboriginal name meaning ‘no drink’, they eat only eucalyptus leaves which means that their diet is very low in nutrients so they conserve energy by sleeping for up to 20 hours a day. All of the animals are in huge natural habitat enclosures and it is possible to walk through many of them.
There are also a wide range of endangered beasts from all over the world and the zoo seems to be achieving considerable success with their breeding programme. One of them has been news in all the papers this week and that is about the birth of a baby Asian elephant. The mother had begun her protracted labour on March 1 and after six days of intensive effort on the part of both the cow elephant and her keepers it was announced that the calf was dead inside the womb. This even went out on TV with staff in tears. Then on Thursday a live male elephant calf was born which has captivated people and no doubt encouraged lots of people to visit in the hope of seeing the new calf. He was, of course, in an elephant incubator and not on view. All good stuff but the bit we liked is that the zoo had called in Dr Hildebrandt of the Berlin Zoo to give advice on what should be done – when the elephant was born Dr Hildebrandt announced “this will completely write the elephant birth textbooks”. Not only elephant incubators but also elephant birth textbooks – note the plurals.
They also have a programme of breeding Sumatran tigers that are rapidly losing their habitat as forests are being cleared to make way for unsustainable farming including vast palm plantations. Palm oil is now an ingredient in one in four food products and most of the world’s supply comes from Indonesia and Malaysia – including the rainforest home of the tiger. There is a campaign in Australia calling for the labelling of palm oil on food products stating its source.
Quite a thought provoking day. That’s right – a whole day at the zoo which we thoroughly enjoyed but which was tinged with a note of regret for all the things we wanted to do whilst in Sydney but just never had the time for. We have warmed greatly to the city over the last few days from being not too enamoured with it on day one to sitting on the ferry on the way home adding it to the places to which we want to return. candggortw2 is looking more likely.
Tomorrow we fly to Ayers Rock airport to visit Uluru.

Release The Bats*

11 March 2010
A delightful day – we met up with our friends Chris and Terry from Kent. The four of us had been unable to meet before we came away on our r-t-w trip but by one of those strange synchronistic chances they happened to be in Sydney at the same time as us, so we had arranged to meet up today, and it worked. We went walking and talking through the Botanic Gardens and it was really good having Terry, a very keen birder, there with us to tell us the names of the birds we saw, which all seemed totally unbothered by humans and most are very noisy too. One variety of ‘bird’ that amazed us wasn’t a bird at all, it was a fruit bat, or rather hundreds of fruit bats, all hanging and chattering in the trees with one or two occasionally flying from one tree to another.

We had read that there are fruit bats in the Botanic Gardens and had expected something the size of bats we see at home not these huge things the size of crows! The Botanic Gardens were established in 1816 on the area that had originally been used to grow (not very successfully) vegetables for the colony and now has both native and introduced plants and trees from around the world with some magnificent examples of the indigenous Moreton Bay Figs with immense gnarled trunks. The Gardens provide some of the most stunning views of the harbour and on a warm sunny day like today it was a most pleasant place to be, made better by the company of old friends.

Inevitably we all commented on similar things such as how ‘obedient’ pedestrians are by never crossing until the green man lights up even though there is no traffic to be seen; the litre (and occasional two litre) bottles of sun cream SPF 30 or 50; how the cost of living is so much higher than in the UK; and, the similarity between Sydney and cities in England in the 60s – well at least it’s a decade ahead of NZ!
We bade farewell after a long and leisurely lunch, with Chris and Terry going shopping in Paddington – to get there they had to go across Hyde Park and along Oxford Street (unanswered question: did Chris buy an opal bracelet?) and us going on a ferry across the harbour to Manley where we had intended to do part of the Manley Scenic Walk but in the few minutes it took us to reach the Pacific coast from the wharf it had started raining and we really wanted to be fair-weather walkers today so we walked, under cover, around Manley which is a bit like Crouch End-on-sea with palm trees and something called a “kiss’n’ride” scheme. Can anyone explain what this is, please?

We caught the ferry back – it was no longer raining so we sat on deck and had some more stunning views of the iconic Harbour Bridge and Opera House, and then returned ‘home’ along George St, Alfred St, and Pitt St.

And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda*

10 March 2010
After a night spent in a heavenly bed with heads resting on heavenly pillows it was a grey and drizzly day which made Sydney look unattractive because many of its high rise buildings are in brutalist grey concrete which seemed somehow threatening and even the Opera House looked grey beneath today’s skies. We decided the best thing to do was to hop on buses and travel around the city and hop off when we got to an attraction that was a) indoors and b) we wanted to see or a) outdoors b) we wanted to see and c) it wasn’t raining at that point. That way we happened to visit the Queen Victoria Building, Sydney Aquarium and the Art Gallery of New South Wales and see a number of other places in between including Circular Quay, Kings Cross (not a railway station but an a “Bohemian” area), Woolloomooloo Bay (good job the ‘o’ key works on this computer), Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, The Harbour Bridge (went over it twice on the bus), Chinatown and The Rocks where we had a wonderful vegetarian lunch.

We spent hours at the Sydney Aquarium and much of that time was spent watching the Platypuses and the Dugongs – we were enthralled. There are two huge sea tanks which have walkways beneath them so it is possible to see the creatures swimming alongside and in the case of the sharks, rays and turtles gliding overhead. There is also a huge collection of fish, sea-anenomes and corals from the Great Barrier Reef.

The Queen Victoria building (or QVB as it seems to be called) was built as a market hall in 1898 and has a large statue of the large Queen outside it. It has been elegantly restored in 1986 as an up-market, four-storey shopping mall. The building is magnificent being built of sandstone with pillars and statues on the outside and beautiful woodwork and stained glass inside.
The Gallery of New South Wales has a huge collection of artefacts starting with some stunning Aboriginal art including some very beautiful grave posts, moving on through a large collection of European art from the eleventh to twentieth centuries – with a surprisingly large number of Pre-Raphaelite paintings plus sculptures and paintings from Frederick Lord Leighton. In fact English art, perhaps unsurprisingly, is well represented with paintings from Reynolds through to Ben Nicolson and on to Gilbert and George. Australian paintings get a number of galleries to themselves and there are also Japanese and Asian galleries with stunning ceramics including works by Hamada and Shimoka as well as some beautiful and serene cravings of the Buddha.

Goodbye and Hello*

March 10 2010
Our last morning in New Zealand and a last wander around Christchurch and as we returned to Cathedral Square we saw the Town Crier and said hello and introduced ourselves as he’s Louise’s Dad and we talked about Walthamstow and the allotments.

We then took a short flight (at least by the standards of this holiday) to Australia and landed at Sydney airport, which was strangely deserted. Like all large modern airports it was impersonal but it seemed worse than most when it came to signage; unable to find the shuttle buses to the hotels we went to the information desk which had a sign giving the information that there was no one at the desk and we should go up the escalators and walk 60 metres to our left. Once there we found an information desk had a sign giving the information that there was no one at the desk and we should walk 60 metres to our left and go to the top of a different set of escalators... we did eventually find someone who did direct us to the shuttle buses. We don’t know if it was because we have spent nearly a month in New Zealand (and Easter Island and Tahiti prior to that) where it is all very relaxed, peaceful and verdant but we both felt very overwhelmed by the bumper-to-bumper traffic seemingly going in every direction (including above and below) and the noise and people rushing everywhere. We were very relieved to arrive at our hotel which despite being huge seemed an oasis of calm. What are we going to be like when we reach Hong Kong and Tokyo? We’re staying at The Westin, which like our hotel in Christchurch also has a “heritage” building (the old GPO building) but we’re staying in the new tower which is the dream made reality of some interior designer and where everything is “heavenly” – we have a “heavenly” bed with five huge “heavenly” pillows (actually the bed and the pillows are pretty heavenly being incredibly soft yet very supportive). The bathroom is a huge frosted glass cube with a “heavenly” bath and “heavenly” towels and inside the bathroom are two more frosted glass cubes one with a shower and the other with a lavatory – but is it heavenly toilet paper?
In the evening we wandered through part of the city which seems to be in a state of upheaval as it is being renovated, renewed and regenerated until 2030 – sadly it seems to be being made into any big city in any western country with McDonalds, Star*ucks, Nike and the like on every corner. We wandered down to the harbour which does seem to still have a unique character (and a McDonalds and a Wagamama) and had dinner in a place overlooking the water. Good food, good wine but strange music – why did we choose a place with a DJ playing loud house-music?

I’ll Never Find Another Ewe