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Featured Destination: Australia |
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| Text and photos
by Philip Game |
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| Past
Issues |
Angkor Wat, Cambodia
Assmannshausen, Germany
Auckland, New Zealand
Australia
Chengdu, China
Constance, Germany
Daegu, South Korea
Delhi, Agra and Jaipur, India
Frankfurt, Germany
Gwangju, Korea
Hong Kong
Hong Kong 2
Istanbul, Turkey
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From Delhi/Orchha, India
Hanoi, Vietnam
Jeju, South Korea
Jeju Island, South Korea
Kaufbeuren, Germany
Kaziranga, India
Lijiang, China
London, England
Melbourne, Australia
Nagoya, Japan
Okinawa, Japan
Osaka, Japan
Repkong, Japan
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Santa Fe, New Mexico
Schwerin, Germany
Seattle, Washington
Sikkim, India
Seoul, Korea
Sydney, Australia
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Thailand
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Tokyo, Japan
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Varanasi, India
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Smooth as a billiard table
Stuart Highway, the main thruway, runs down the Central Australia. The bitumen
ribbon undulates past magnificent craggy ridges of ancient stone, which
reveals the angry red sands beneath. The highway squeezes through Heavitree
Gap, Alice Springs, then gathers speed,rushing south past the modest bungalows
of aboriginal communities. Here the Ghan locomotive and its string of carriages
break through the Macdonnell Ranges, returning south. Named for the Afghan
cameleers, the first Ghan train took two days to reach Alice Springs in
1929, heralding an end to the town's legendary isolation. For decades it
remained a vital but erratic lifeline, the track often washed away by flash
floods or undermined by the shifting sands of the Simpson Desert. Now, a
rerouted and privatized train glides out of Adelaide twice a week. a comfortable
and reliable journey through the night.
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| Down further the highway is Erldunda. Turn
the corner and soon after the Erldunda roadhouse, appears the first,
but the least-known of Central Australia's three distinctive monoliths,
the distant, shimmering purple table-top mesa of Mount Conner, which
the aborigines know as Atila, the ice-man who brings the cold eastern
winds to Ulrur. Now the long, sinuous sand ridges appear, angry brick
red under their skimpy clothing of scrub. In between are thickets
of desert oak, a tall, hardy casuarinas. Distant shapes, moving between
the trees, usually take the form of the "ships of the desert"
supplanted by motor vehicles in the 1920s. |
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Uluru, Ayers Rock, that essentially Australian
icon, appears over a rise. From the incandescent orange of down, to
the burnt ochre with textured shadows of late afternoon, it remains
an extraordinary, brooding, presence. Like the visible portion of
an iceberg, these upended strata of coarse sandstone represent just
the tip of something much larger, far below the surface of the earth.
Minga, "tiny black ants" is what the indigenous Anangu people
term the visitors who insist, against their expressed wishes, on climbing
the sandstone spine of Uluru. Rangers, unable to impose a total ban,
compromise with frequent closures for many lives have been lost on
the exposed slopes. Much more "insightful" (as Americans
say) is to take a walking tour like Uluru Experience, starting in
pre-dawn darkness on the eight kilometer journey around the base,
to discover waterholes, wildlife and native foods. Twenty minutes
down the track, the rising sun burns the sleeping colossus an incandescent
brick red.
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The Anangu their land is
managed as national park, the restrictions applied to visitors' movements,
especially around the areas fenced off as sacred sites, where signs in several
languages forbid trespass or photography. For the Anangu, religion encompasses
everything. Tjukurpa is the traditional law that explains how the world
was created and guides every-day life. "The Law" or "The
Way" and the stories associated with Uluru often carry moral messages.
Legends have been revealed for public consumption around the sacred site,
"Kuniya Piti;" of the python, Kuniya, that laid its eggs here,
back at the dawn of time. Another Kuniya story explains which plant is helpful
or harmful. Then there is the story of an ancestral thief who stole from
a hunter's cooking fire and was smoked out of his cave refuge and punished
by smoke asphyxiation.
Unique plant life is an unmistakable part of the Uluru landscape. "Bush
tucker," the native foods now being discovered by urban Australians
include the native plum, with an astringent, dry taste. Aboriginal people
chewed on native tobacco, a bush with small white flowers. The desert tomato,
distinguished by its thorny leaves, purple and yellow flowers, produces
a raisin-like fruit. |
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Thousand-year old cave paintings, necessarily fenced against vandalism.
Map out a network of camps and waterholes. Mutitjulu, the most reliable
waterhole around the base of the Rock, is the home of Wanampi, the
ancestral water snake of the Anangu. At the Mala waterhole the sound
of Shoemaker Frogs trilling is a harbinger of surface water. In extremities
of drought, the Anangu caught the frogs and squeezed them to disgorge
the water they stored in their bodies. |
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| Mala, the rock wallaby,
is an animal now hunted to extinction in this area, but still vitally important
in the Anangu women. The story of Mala sets the basis for the organization
of age and status groups amongst the Anangu, whose girls are still kept
apart from boys at school. Tjukurpa the "Law" related how the
Mala people made their way separately to Uluru and began to observe a ceremony.
Visitors from another clan appeared with an invitation to join their own
mulga seed ceremonies. However, the Mala ceremonies, once begun, had to
continue uninterrupted and the invitation was refused. Offended, the interlopers
let loose their Devil Dingo Dog which killed one of the Mala women and sent
the others fleeing into the men's camps in a violation of strict taboos. |
Utterly different, out in the shimmering haze, lie
the sensuous stone curves of Kata Tjuta, the Olgas. As with The Rock,
the earlier you can start out, the better to appreciate the serenity
of the Valley of the Winds in relative solitude, before the sun begins
in earnest its climb into the heavens. Tali is the Anangu name for
the red sand ridge country. The desert oak woodland stretches to the
foot of Kata Tjuta, the Olgas, now glowing a light hazy musk in the
fierce, dry light of mid-morning. Kata Tjuta is so sacred the natives
won't reveal anything about Tjukurpa applicable out here. Certainly
the pitted caverns on the flanks of the huge rounded domes might suggest
the traces of ancestral creatures. Within the Valley of the Winds
the ribbons of lush green delineate water-courses and rock pools.
How best to end a visit to Uluru? Undoubtedly by experiencing the
"sounds of silence:" dining out on a high sand dune under
the stars.
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| Alone musician "pipes" visitors
to table with the resonant boom of his didjeridoo, the aboriginal
instrument reminiscent of Tibetan lamas' ceremonial horns.
In the darkening sky, the Rock fades out slowly beyond the next dune
crest. The distant Olgas punctuate the western horizon, otherwise
enlivened only by the striations of sunset and a few flashes of lightning.
After dinner, a telescope is trained toward the night skis: have you
harem of moons? Even if the poetry recital falls a bit flat, the sounds
of true desert silence, which follow, are compensation enough.
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Philip Game's
travels began 1n 1960s Tasmania and have include several journeys in the
Australian Outback. He is now a freelance travel writer and photo journalist
based in Melbourne. His work has been published in 29 countries. |
