Easter Break Part Dos

G’day all!! I’m going to continue with my Easter break story instead of do my homework right now, a better alternative. It was an absolutely perfect day outside yesterday, and today it’s a little rainy. It’s a good rainy though, I’m enjoying it, plus it helps because there is a lot for me to be doing and I don’t need to be tempted to spend my day lazing around outside! Assignments are starting to have to be done and I feel a little behind in my classes since I missed some when I was sick. I know I shouldn’t stress since I only have to pass and that won’t be a problem, but you know that I can’t just accept that, even in Australia I feel like I have to do well! Anyway, pretty boring week, school, hanging out, the usual. I finally got to talk to Mark yesterday which was nice! I’m glad tax season is over. I got a wonderful package in the mail from Mrs. Nordstrom from church with a hand knit hat!! Now I can keep warm as it is starting to get pretty chilly out. And I was surprised with yet another card from my wonderful Grandma! That’s always exciting. Hint, hint. Last night Nick made a roast that was delicious and much better than pb&j or soup! Time is going by fairly quickly here and it’s making me sad. I can’t imagine leaving this place even though I am starting to really miss some things about home, namely you people. It’s weird to feel so much love and attachment to both places that are so different and OH SO far away! It’s a good thing though. Okay, on with the show!

So, I stopped before Monday. This is when the real excitement and wonder starts! Monday morning we had to get up super early to get to the airport on time for our flight to Ayer’s Rock. We had just a bit of delay but it wasn’t bad at all. The plane ride itself was pretty good. They showed the movie The Holiday with Cameron Diaz and other people I don’t remember. It was cute, a RoCo, of course I liked it! They gave us pretty good sandwiches to eat as well. It was pretty exciting to watch the landscape change below us as well. We went from the city, out to the mountains and farmlands. Then it started to look more like desert, and then it got to be red! It was very very red. And we saw some big salt lakes as well which looked pretty cool. When we finally got there, just a little before landing I got to see Uluru AND Kata Tjuta from the sky!! That was pretty cool. I saw this vast red desert with some small vegetation and then boom there are these huge rocks out of nowhere! They looked pretty impressive honestly. Anyway, it was a tiny little airport and we got off the airplane from the back down stairs! I know, real exciting, but I thought so because I’ve never done that! There was just one baggage claim inside, one check in place with a few stalls, and one big waiting room for departures and that’s it! We got our stuff and headed out to the bus that was taking us to our hotel. Everything there is in the Ayer’s Rock Resort, it has all the hotels and campgrounds and stores and such in a circle in there and was only about 10 minutes from the airport. We were at the Desert Gardens Hotel but didn’t yet have a room. So we sat around the resort and relaxed waiting. When we got our room we relaxed more and got ready for the evening since the bus was coming to get us at 6. The Sounds of Silence dinner was that first night. The bus took us out to this sand dune about 20 minutes from the resort. We drove past a college, and a couple other buildings, like maybe the water treatment place, and were on a red dirt road most of the way that was quite bumpy. Anyway, the sun was setting and was quite nice when we arrived at our sand dune. We walked up the path to the top, I was the leader of the group, where a guy greeted us with a glass of sparkling wine! It was quite tasty. And wonderful to sip while watching the sunset in the desert. It was gorgeous. I found that I really like the desert, I think it’s beautiful! At least here. It helped that they had just got most of their rain for the year as well. There was actually a lot of green everywhere. There was much more vegetation than I was expecting and it was pretty. With the red dirt/sand it made everything look prettier as well I think. Most of our view was Kata Tjuta, as it was closer and the sun was right behind it. You could still see Uluru off in the distance as well however. They were generous with the bubbly, though I only had a glass, and served some appetizers up there as well. I had the crocodile one and some kangaroo. I liked the kangaroo, but the crocodile was a little weird. Honestly, there are very few people who eat either here, it’s just kind of cool to try something different. So they kept us up on top for awhile, to drink the bubbly, eat the food, and take lots of pictures through most of the sunset. After awhile the sun was almost gone and they had us walk down the other side of the dune to where our dinner was set up. The sunset went through many different colors and there were some clouds to reflect the color that were just gorgeous. So we headed down and picked out our tables. They were all set with white tablecloths and candle centerpieces. There was a buffet line set up with our dinner cooking, that’s strange to see in the middle of the desert! Our table was closest to the rock, so nothing to block our view. The other people at our table were Liz, Deidre, and Liz from different parts of the UK. They were here for one of their son’s wedding and then just travelled around awhile. There was also Sarah and Sam, a very cute young couple. She was from Sydney and he was a Kiwi, from New Zealand. All of them were very nice and we had some great conversation through the evening about everything. It was interesting to have the US, UK and Australia all represented there and see the different views and such, I loved it. Sarah had a fascination with Kansas ever since she was little so that was funny. We saw the first star out and it was really bright, so we all made a wish - you know star bright star light, first star I see tonight. Slowly, more and more stars started to show up as the sun went further down and dusk turned to darkness. There was a little bit of cloud cover but you could still see about everything. It was amazing, I couldn’t stop watching the sky, and the impending darkness beyond our little set up! After a bit of talking and drinking wine, which again was very tasty, they read a poem to start the night and we had a minute of silence to really listen to the silence of the desert around us. It was incredible, really, it’s so hard to get anywhere to hear it that silent with all the night creatures buzzing and such. They started the dinner by serving us all pumpkin and herb soup with bread, I’ve noticed a lot of pumpkin soup in the supermarket and never thought it looked too good. This was delicious though! Then they called us up table by table to get our food from the buffet. It was spectacular food! There was crocodile caesar salad, pasta salad, a Dijon potato salad, chicken skewers, kangaroo steak, roasted bacon potatoes, lemon barramundi, and some beef. I tried a little of everything although I didn’t know what all I was eating when we got back to the table because it was so dark! I think that also means I had to have eaten a few bugs, there were moths and other bugs all around us and we couldn’t tell if they got in our food. I did have a grasshopper hop into my glass of wine, though! Luckily I had white wine so I could see and get it out, Liz had some red wine and couldn’t tell when she thought something bounced in there. So we ate our main course and conversed and had a great time. There was a didgeridoo player performing while we ate. That really is an awesome instrument. It sounds so cool, and especially in the silence out in the desert. He was white, and said that he was playing instead of an Aboriginal because in that part of the country, that group doesn’t play the instrument traditionally. After dinner, a guy came out to talk to us about the stars. By this time it was complete blackness beyond our tables and there were billions of stars out. I never even knew this many stars existed!! It was absolutely incredible, one of the things I had most been looking forward to my entire time here, and truly one of the most amazing things I’ve seen yet. I love the sky, and to actually be able to see it all was amazing! They were so clear and there were so many that you could see all the little ones and make out full constellations and everything. The entire Milky Way was visible, I’ve never seen it. That was awesome! There were even a few thin clouds around, and we still saw this much. There were a few planets out that were really bright as well, I think Venus was the first one we could see and the brightest, of course since women are from there! I loved it and couldn’t stop looking above me. Our astrologer told us all about the different constellations and how you could find directions from a few of the different constellations, namely the Southern Cross which is on the Australian flag. He also told us many stories from the Aboriginals about how the constellations got there. One very shortened one was this man had a boat and wanted to keep it safe where nobody could steal it so it stuck it up in the sky, and that’s the Milky Way. There was a lot more to it, little details and such, but that was mainly it. I videotaped a lot of the talking, and I tried taking pictures of the sky, a few of them actually turned out, I got many visible spots without a tripod! After our talk they served dessert - my favorite part of the meal!! I tried most all of it, it was delicious. There was fresh fruit, a chocolate brownie with I think white, milk and dark chocolate in it, chocolate espresso lava cake, a bread pudding with cinnamon and fruit and then another kind of cake that I didn’t try. Oh, it was so amazing. We had a little more time for wine, conversation and star gazing before our bus interrupted the desert noises to take us back where we promptly fell asleep. It was truly an amazing night! I thought we could see a lot stars just here on campus, out there was spectacular!

Tuesday! After our long night we then had to wake up at 5:15 the next morning to be picked up at our hotel at 6 for the sunrise Uluru tour. That was difficult. Though completely worth it. It was really amazing to watch the entire sunset one night, and wake up the next morning to see the entire sunrise - complete light to dusk to complete dark, and then complete dark to dawn to complete light. We even watched the complete sunset again on Tuesday! Anyway, so we get picked up in a small bus with about 20 people and drive out to the sunrise lookout spot. On our way the tour guide told us different stories from the Aborigine people of the region called the Anangu people. There were stories of how Uluru came to be the way it is now at different spots, and she pointed out a few sacred spots on the rock that are mostly crevices or caves. Some are women’s sites and some are men’s sites, where strictly only one or the other can go. One of these stories was the Mala story, I‘ll try to tell right it in a shortened version. The Mala men all went up the rock to have one of their ceremonies. They were approached by some other men inviting them to their place or something, and the Mala men said hey thanks a lot, we would, but you know Law says we can’t leave once we start a ceremony until it’s complete, so sorry but next time. Well these other men were upset they didn’t accept the invitation, so they sent the Demon Devil Dingo Dog after the Mala men. One of them saw the dog coming and told everyone hey we need to run! They didn’t believe for awhile until they saw it themselves and it was close. So they took off running away in fear. The eldest was behind the rest of them as he was slower and wanted to make sure his men were safe. The Demon Devil Dingo Dog got a hold of him and threw him up against the rock, and to this day you can see his face imprint in the rock. It’s a profile, facing the direction his men were running away to safety. So by the time we heard all this we had arrived at the sunrise viewing spot and the sun was well on it’s way to rising. There were tons of tour busses and people there. It sort of detracted from it all, but what can you do. It was still awesome both to see the sunrise on its own, and to watch the color on the rock change the whole time. It went from sort of dull to this real orange, and then to a vibrant red, and when the sun was behind a cloud it was more a dull burnt color. It was really cool to see it change in just an instant and take on a totally different character. Anyway, we got some hot chocolate and muffins and such while we watched the sun creep its way up higher into the sky. Once most of the coaches had left the car park our guide took us over to a patch of red dirt and gave us an explanation of the geology of the rock. It was really interesting. Apparently hundreds of millions of years ago there was this mountain range, and it had two main rivers running down it. One was really fast and deposited fine particles in an alluvial fan at the base, while the other moved more slowly depositing bigger rocks and such at the bottom in an alluvial fan. So then a big inland ocean formed and covered everything up, so all that was deposited there was compacted really good. Then that dried up and another mountain range formed so that the compacted deposited stuff was between the two mountain ranges. Well they caused a whole lot of pressure there and trapped heat, so all this deposit was being cooked basically, and eventually the one that was formed of small particles just buckled at a 90 degree angle. This was Uluru. Today, we only see the top part of that, so there is a lot more below the surface and to one direction of it, like an L, we see the top part of the bottom part of the L, if that makes any sense. So the different layers of sediment are really vertical. Sorry if that’s confusing or hard to picture, it was a little confusing with her there telling us and drawing it in the dirt. The other alluvial fan composed of bigger sediments turned into Kata Tjuta across the way, and it was just twisted and turned and formed into a different structure rather than buckling. So it looks completely different because of the way it’s eroded and what it is composed of. It was really interesting to hear all that, and to know it happened over millions of years. That’s something! So we had our little lesson and were on our way for more of a tour around the rock. We headed around the side and she pointed out more sacred spots, they don’t want you taking pictures of these or going near them if you’re walking around the base since there is so much spiritual meaning to them. Pretty cool stuff. As we drove around she started telling us the story of Kuniya, a snake, who lived over at one of the sacred spots and kept her eggs under her, you can see all this in the rock. She took her eggs around her neck and went around to the other side to visit a friend because she heard her nephew was killed and wanted to see what happened. Well we couldn’t be told the rest of the story until we got to the next spot. The Anangu can only tell stories where they took place, so if something finished up in South Australia, they have to go there to tell it. So we drove around and got to another spot where we could get out and walk around. We went close to the rock and walked in to see a watering hole. First we stopped at a spot to touch the rock, and she pointed out part of it sounded hollow if you tapped on it, I think that was just from the erosion and stuff leaving an empty spot and then rock covering it up again or something. So she started telling us the rest of the Kuniya story, she came over to this spot and the guy wouldn’t tell her what happened to her nephew, saying it was men’s business and women shouldn’t get involved. I don’t remember all of the story or details or anything, if you’re interested, I have it in a booklet. But he kept refusing to tell her and she got more and more angry and they fought, she camped out over there to pester him to tell her. In the end, she struck him with her stick or something, and killed him on accident. She had only meant to hurt him, but did much worse. You can see his two battle scars on the rock, one has white coming out of it, tears, and the other has red, his blood. It’s really there, too. And right below that spot is where Kuniya rests to this day, so if he ever comes back to life she’s ready. You can see her curled up in the rock as well. Right under Kuniya is a little cave type area we went to. This was where we saw a bunch of paintings, years and years of paintings over each other. It’s really interesting. They say nobody knows what the symbols mean except the teacher and the child being taught. This was where the elders brought the children to teach them children’s stories. We can only be told children’s stories as well as we are not initiated into the group, we are not men and women since we haven’t gone through proper lessons and ceremonies and such. So they teach things slowly, when the child is ready, and more is exposed as you get older and then you can teach it when you become an elder. They only teach orally, nothing is written down except these paintings. They look to the elders for their Law, which the Anangu people call Tjukapa. It’s quite interesting, I loved hearing more about their culture. It’s also neat because that is just this group for this area, and every “country” within Australia is different in some ways. Anyway, back to the cave. We know what some of the symbols can stand for in general, and red always means danger or very important. A sad part about this wall was you could tell the paintings lower down were wiped away and not visible anymore. In the 70s when they started using the rock for tourism, they wanted to get better pictures, so they came by and splashed water on the wall to see the paintings better and take good pictures, so now we have some great photos of those paintings, but can no longer see them on the rock. Also, up on the ceiling there are lots of dots, like stars, and every culture has always had stories about the skies and the constellations and they did too, and taught it to the children. So that was cool. Then we went to see the main watering hole in the whole area. It looked like a little tiny pond but was apparently enough for the year. It collected at the bottom of this crevice type thing in the rock. There was a smaller pool up higher for when they got desperate, but it was dangerous to get to. It was a pretty area. From there you could see one of the spots Kuniya had been. From the white man’s perspective, the first guy to “discover” Uluru named this watering hole Maggie Springs, after the girl he was going to marry when he got home after his expedition. Then he called the rock Ayer’s Rock after her father, a politician back home. Turns out, he was gone for so long everyone thought he was dead, so Maggie married someone else and moved on. This devastated him and it’s said he left his heart at Maggie Springs, and up in the rock you can see this cut out that looks exactly like a perfect heart!! So we walked back to the bus and drove around back to the other side, to see the path to climb up to the top. This is very disrespectful to the Anangu people. They encourage you to not climb, though you can still do it. For them, this rock is a very spiritual thing to them, and especially along the path you climb, that is the path the Mala men took up to their ceremony, so it’s a very sacred part. They don’t want you there. Also, it is very dangerous. It’s closed if it gets too windy or too hot. There isn’t any clear cut path and a lot of people don’t prepare themselves properly. You need lots and lots of water to do this or you’ll be dehydrated. Also, good shoes are important, and you need to be in good shape to begin with. There have been quite a few deaths recorded on the rock, I think 30 some odd. Another problem is people will chase after their hat or camera or something when it blows away or falls and they just fall off the rock, that’s the most common problem. How horrible! One guy the most recent to be a problem, required a rescue from the top of the rock. This is bad because it takes a few hours, it’s hard to land a helicopter up there, it’s damaging to the rock, and it costs the person getting rescued thousands of dollars. He went up there with 1 litre of water for him, his wife and his two small children under 10. And he wore crocs, plastic shoes, and they started melting because the rock gets so hot, so he wrapped his feet in his shirt and continued up. They were all severely dehydrated at the top, not good. He was an aussie too, so he should have known everything he needed to do. Anyway, it’s quite dangerous as well as against the Anangu people’s wishes. Another reason it’s sad for the Anangu is if you do die, they make the park close the climb for a week or something so that they can mourn your death. They think it’s very sad and even though they don’t know you, and you were doing something they disapprove, they take that week to go through ceremonies and stuff to mourn your loss. How sad is that?! Plus, you can very visibly see the damage it’s doing to the rock itself, that whole path is clearly white now. So she told us all about that and we headed out a ways to the culture center. We couldn’t take photos there because it was run by the Anangu and they wanted to share their story with you and respect that or something. It was pretty interesting, it had more stories about the area and how their Law works and what the women and men traditionally did and stuff. There was more general info on the different Aboriginal groups through the whole country and stuff, it was good. Our final stop of the morning was one last photo op spot a little further away from Uluru. On the road right before we pulled off our guide spotted a Western Brown snake!! This is one of the most venomous snakes out there. And this one particularly was even more venomous as it was a baby, apparently they can’t control their venom as much. She stopped and got out and showed us where it was, while we sat safely on board! She wanted to keep it from getting run over but couldn’t get too close to it. So she tried throwing rocks to scare it and then took a big branch from the bush and sort of nudged it off the road. That was a little cool, a snake! Really all the only other wildlife we saw was birds everywhere, and bugs. The kangaroos and emus and such are all nocturnal to help with the heat of the desert, so we didn’t see them. Okay, after all that we headed back to the hotel and crashed! I think we got back at 10 or 11, already a long day! We had lunch in the market center of the resort and just relaxed for awhile.

Phew. I’m tired, are you yet?! I think I’ll call it quite for this post, give you a rest and keep you waiting in anticipation for more. I keep getting distracted, this is hard to write all this out, and it takes forever!! I’ll get there though, hopefully I’ll be caught up before too much exciting stuff happens to me in the present! We’re only on Tuesday….we can get through this together though! Okay, hope you’ve enjoyed more of my exciting adventures, you’re still in good health and good spirits. Please let me know how you’re going, I care and I’d like to know! I’m hanging in, still enjoying this wonderful country and all it offers me, although unfortunately I’m having to actually think about school some now. Here are your quotes for the day:

“Lots of people limit their possibilities by giving up easily. Never tell yourself this is too much for me. It's no use. I can't go on. If you do you're licked, and by your own thinking too. Keep believing and keep on keeping on.” Norman Vincent Peale

“Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible - it cannot be seen or measured, yet it is powerful enough to transform you in a moment, and offer you more joy than any material possession could.” Barbara De Angelis

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn” Benjamin Franklin

Love always, Alissa