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Day 67 - Uluru (Ayers Rock)
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Needless to say, we both woke up with vicious hangovers after our extravagances yesterday evening !
When I first sat up in bed, I remembered that during the night I'd been woken up by someone thumping on the door, and then abrubtly stopping just as I was poised to jump off the top bunk to investigate.
This thumping started & stopped for most of the next 10 minutes, and in my drunken state I was convinced that it was local kids playing "knock & run". I decided in my drunken wisdom that the best tactic was to stay silent and pretend that there was no-one in the room, so hopefully they would bugger off and leave me alone.
This seemed to work well, and I fell asleep again.
Sometime later there was another period of door-banging, and this time they were shaking the door, so I whispered to Katie (in the bunk below) to be quiet, and eventually I went back to sleep.
The next thing I remember is more banging and door jangling, except this time I could hear the lock turning and the door opening !!! Without thinking about it, I instictively/drunkenly leapt off the top bunk into the pitch blackness, and confronted the intruder. I was prepared to push them out of the room so that I could jam the door closed..... and it was at this point that I saw that intruder was Katie, who looked absolutely bloody awful.
We had a few seconds of looking at each other like "what the ....?!?!" and then she explained that she'd woken up and gone to the toilet block, but didn't take the key, so the door to our room locked behind her.
When she got back to the room she started banging, and kept doing so sporadically for the next 30 mins or so, thinking that I was fast asleep. (I swear that only the dead could have slept through that banging !!!)
I couldn't understand why she hadn't once called my name when she was banging on the door, and her only response was a rather sheepish "I didn't think about it" !!!!!
She also admitted that she'd tried sleeping on the doorstep for a couple of minutes, then in the toilets (?!?), before going back to reception and asking the guy to let her in to our room !!!!
So we both felt like a right couple of prats, but got back into bed and fell asleep instantly.
When we awoke, we both fought through our hangovers, completed the paperwork to hire the car, and grabbed some lunch in the resort.
Getting lunch proved an experience. We chose a "fast food" place which did burgers and wedges etc, and placed our order. We then sat and waited... and waited... and waited... I think our order took 20 minutes, for no apparent reason unless Katie's veggieburger took an awful long time to cook...
Just as our burgers came out to the service hatch, the guy had to serve an aboriginal family, a mother with 3 kids. The mother was holding a 20 dollar note, and even I could see that she was ordering rather a lot of food if that was the only money she had.
So the guy serves up all their drinks and snacks (including the last of the potato wedges), and it comes to about $30. He told her that she didn't have enough money to pay for the food.
So the lady shoves back a few things, the guys voids them off the transaction, and asks for $24. Again the lady randomly shoves back a few things (including some wedges), and this continued for some time until she had enough money to pay for the final selection.
Based on the way this scene played out, I could only assume that none of the family could count. They could speak English well enough to order & understand the staff, but they could not add up the value of their food.
It was a strange scene to witness, and a bit embarrassing, but there was no harm done and so they wandered off, leaving a rather annoyed member of staff who had to throw out all the food they didn't want. He looked like this was a fairly regular occurence.
He then turns around, sees my burgers, notices that their are now no wedges ready, and shouts out to the kitchen "more wedges please" !! I think I nearly started crying at this point...
So after another 10 minutes (!!!!!) we FINALLY had our order, with hot wedges and cold burgers, and by this time it was raining outside, so all in all it was not exactly the greatest lunch experience of my life...
The situation here with the indigenous aborigines is very strange and very worrying... In his book "Down Under", Bill Bryson refers to them as the "forgotten" and even "invisible" people, and he is absolutely right.
After lunch we set off to walk around Uluru, and there were enough clouds around to help reduce the temperature and make the walk more bearable.
When you get to the vistitors centre in Uluru, it is made very clear to you that the local aborigine tribes ask you NOT to climb the rock.
The monolith is a spiritual place for them, like a grand & sacred cathedral/mosque, but one that has been used as a place of worship for tens of thousands of years. The tribes make it crystal clear that it is very disrespectful for westerners to clamber over this sacred monument, which is so central to their spiritual development.
Katie & I had already agreed months ago that we would not climb the rock, which was probably just as well because the climb was closed anyway due to "strong winds".
(It was also closed the day we arrived, and the day we left, so I suspect that they try to keep the climb closed as much as possible these days...)
The walk around the rock was 12 kms long, or you can do a number of smaller "bite size" walks. We decided that we'd do the big boy, 12ks didn't sound that bad...
So we started off in our hiking boots like good little trekkers, and realised within 100 metres that they were an absolute waste of time as the walk was dead easy and everyone else was wearing flip-flops !!! We could have probably worn ballet shoes and been alright... ;)
Regardless, we pushed on, and I think the whole circuit took us just under 3 hours at a very leisurely (i.e. hungover) pace with plenty of stops.
On the way round it was interesting how varied the rock was. Each of the 4 sides was completely different in terms of the way the rock looked. It was also a lot more curved than I'd expected.
And there were plenty of interesting little features as we made our way around, like this cave which contained some aboriginal wall paintings.
Soon after this, just 15 minutes into our walk, Katie was struggling, and decided to try and catch 40 winks in an attempt to shake off her hangover !!
It was a weird experience though, because the walk is littered with signs asking you NOT to take photos of some sections of the rock, because they are considered extremely important spiritual sights for the local aborigines.
I started off respecting their requests completely, until I eventually realised that by the end of our walk I would have absolutely no photos of any of the interesting sections of the rock whatsoever, you would just be left with the less photogenic areas.
I'm all for respecting the wishes of the local owners/guardians, but it does seem a bit much to ask you not to climb over it and to walk around instead (fair enough), and then to ask you not to take photos at the 10-15 best photo opportunites on the walk around ?!?!
You are asked not to walk onto the rock at any time, but obviously we saw some people climbing all over sections, and even I managed to climb up a neighbouring rock to get a photo without realising that this was also a spiritual site of some sort. I could have been charged $7,000 for ignoring the signs (which I didn't see), so that could have been an expensive mistake...
Incidentally, you can be fined $50,000 for ignoring the signs and climbing the main rock route, and I wonder how many people do that because there was no-one around to prevent it...
Towards the end we were both tired, so took any opportunity for a rest !
We took a short detour to see a watering hole, and both of us really fancied a dip !
We then came across another cave with ancient aboriginal wall paintings, using some very interesting names for some of the materials !!!
(Does this suggest that Hayden has aboriginal blood ?!)
We then rounded the final corner and were VERY happy to see our little car !
By the time we got back to the car we were knackered (exhausted), so we went back to our hotel and made dinner in the kitchen, before running over to a viewing point to watch the sunset over the Olgas again, this time without the champagne unfortunately !
On the way back we stopped for some nice snaps as the sun headed towards the horizon, giving the rock that fantastic colour again.
We decided that we were going to get up very early tomorrow to see the sunrise on Uluru, so we had an early and boring night, ready for tomorrow's adventures !
lots of love,
Al & Katie xx
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