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Tropical Australia

It's been a long couple of days. Long, but very awesome. Yesterday morning we flew into the Ayers Rock resort which is in the Australian state called the Northern Territory but is actually very much in central Australia. Very much in the outback. Very much in a desert. It was great. The first thing you notice flying in is the red ground. It's also one of the most striking features of the Australian desert. Red soil. Red sand. Red ground. Everything is red (including my shoes and socks now).

Yesterday afternoon we went almost directly from the airport onto the first of two tours while in the outback. We went to take a hike into and around Kata Tjuta which is a rock formation in the middle of nowhere. There is alot to learn about Kata Tjuta, only a very small amount I still remember. The important part is that it is a very sacred Aboriginal landmark, so much so that aborigines don't (can't) tell white man (or even Aboriginal women) why it is sacred. Or what kind of ceremonies go on there. Only 20% of the rock is even open to the public. And so we went hiking into one of the gorges.

Kata Tjuta from a distance (but not far enough to see the whole thing):

The gorge we hiked into:

And an awesome picture from inside looking out:

And then this morning we went on a very long walk around another, more popular, monolith called Uluru. You can see for miles and miles and miles out here and right in the middle of all this nothingness is this huge huge rock. I think I heard that it is the biggest single rock on the planet. I also understand that only about 10% of the rock is actually above ground. The rest of it extends for like 15km underground.

So our walk this morning was around the entire base of the rock. 12km. At sunrise no less, which sounds awesome, and it was, but it was also very very cold. Not to mention early. But it was worth it. The rock shines in the sunrise and sunset.

Uluru has been there for hundreds of millions of years and has many very awesome erosions in it. Many of them are sacred Aboriginal creation stories and cannot be photographed. Others are some ridiculous caves carved out into the sides of it. This is one of them.

Some people climb to the top of Uluru and walk around. The Aborigines hate hate hate that people do it and there is alot of controversy around whether people should be allowed to or not. I'm not trying to get into the whole thing, but this picture of people climbing to the top demonstrates how big the rock actually is.

And then this afternoon we flew to Cairns. The tropics. Couldn't be more different than the desert. Its humid and green and alive. We didn't get to the hotel until after dark, but the view from the hotel room is absolutely amazing. We just look right out into the harbor with the shore line framing it perfectly. I'll have some pictures tomorrow, hopefully. We're also going diving at the Great Barrier Reef tomorrow, so as usual, I'm very excited.

Posted by Mike at May 30, 2006 07:36 AM