Gecko Trek - Adelaide to Alice Springs
Before I start I just wanted to put this group photo of everyone in, its not often we're all in the same place at the same time and we all were the night before I left.
Anyway, onto what i've been up to for the last couple of weeks....
Having gone from Tokyo to Singapore to Melbourne to Adelaide in the last couple of months, I've been feeling all citied out, holidays are supposed to be about relaxing on a beach aren't they? I figured I'd head in to one of the world's bigger beaches, which are called 'Deserts' when they're not next to the sea. (I will just say before I carry on that a lot of what we did seemed to revolve around rocks in various shapes and sizes and unfortunately my knowledge of geology is minimal...)
DAY 1 - 5/3/3
We started off heading North in our Toyota Land Cruiser (fitted for 8 on 2 facing benches in the back and 2 plus the driver in the front.) We drove for a few hours towards the Flinders Ranges and stopped off at the Yourambulla Caves, which had some aboriginal rock paintings. I had one of those 'Whoa' moments when Nick (our guide) said they were drawn around 20,000 years ago. They were drawn there because the vibrant colours in the surrounding rocks would've helped give the paintings more character and meaning to the people looking and learning from them (aboriginal people had no written language so they learnt through pictures and stories). I thought about how many people lived and died in the last 20,000 years, how they struggled, loved, lost and thought themselves so important' Then I thought how the rocks haven't changed since they first attracted people there 20,000 years ago. Whoa. We people think we're so important.
We headed on to our 'campsite' for the night, which was a dry creek at the beginning of the Flinders Ranges. We got there in time to see the sun go down over the ranges. We all quickly got acquainted with what to expect over the next 10 days. Bed is a Swag (like a giant heavy duty sleeping bag) and the en suite facilities are big trees. Or bushes. Thus the phrase for the week was born.
"I need to find a bush"
"Do you need the shovel?"
"No just a bush, thanks"
DAY 2 - 6/3/3
The next day, we headed into the Flinders National Park and climbed Mt Ohlssen Bagge, it was 941 metres and took about an hour to climb from the bottom.
Having never climbed a proper mountain before, I was dead chuffed to get to the top without dying.
Here's a group pic of the group looking over the edge of one face, from left to right its Christer (Sweden), Gorden (UK), yours truly (Romford), Lisa (UK), Sam (UK via Japan and a bunch of other places), Annette (Germany), Mel (Switzerland), Steffi (pronounced Sshhteffi -Germany) and Sandra (Germany), (there's also Vicki -UK, taking the photo.)
My quote of the day was from Sshhteffi (who found it really funny I'd never climbed a mountain before) who when I questioned why her, Annette and Mel had shot off in front of everyone else, (which I genuinely thought was quite dangerous) was "Its OK. Don't vorry about ze Germans or ze Sviss in ze Mountains!"
That afternoon we drove through a series of gorges, which were all made of different rock. Which was interesting. I'd love to expand on that but its geology.
There were fossilized remains of some tiny jellyfish type organisms embedded in the rock, back from when Australia was all under the sea over 200 million years ago. We all descended from these Whoa.
We visited a little town (population '5') called Parachilna, which used to be a major stop off before the new rail line opened up a few miles down the road. Probably the most exciting thing to happen is the daily coal train, as it passes on its way from the mines to the power station. The train is 2.85km long! We didn't see one as we moved on to our campsite shortly after.
DAY 3 - 7/3/3
Here's a pic of us doing our morning routine of getting up at dawn and rolling up our swags before breakfast.
We visited another small town (1 street) called Leigh Creek where we had some Quandong (though pronounced like con-dom) Pie.
This just made me laugh.
We visited the Coal Mines and saw all the heavy machinery and HUGE trucks, which was coal.
Then we met 'Talc Alf', who Gorden summed up as someone you either have to see as a madman or a genius. I prefer the latter.
Talc Alf lives in the desert with his dog and makes his living carving sculptures out of soapstone (the same stuff Talcum Powder is made of.) He bases his work on a long-standing belief that all the words in all the languages in the word are connected, and that human beings have a basic desire to travel 'to the east' to see, and be happy under the sun.
When he gets into the swing of it he's actually really convincing. He breaks down the words into their component letters or groups of letters and turns those broken down segments into different meanings. For instance, a P is the shape it is because you can draw arms and legs on and you have a Person. From P you get Parliament, Public, Population -all People words.
M the shape is like a Mountain. And the sun rises over the mountains, and when you have an M followed by an A, an A is the sun's progress through the sky, -dawn, noon and dusk, so you have the whole day ahead. It symbolises the future. What's the past? Its earlier, its this morning, AM. So if AM is the past then MA is the opposite, it's the future! "Isn't that Bewdiful" (he kept saying once he'd made his point)
I got him to do my name. He worked it out on the blackboard and came up with 'Travelling to the East makes people think.' Which I like. I think it breaks down as MA (the future) TH (something to do with the path of the sun while travelling as we naturally head the east for happiness) E (Everyone, Equal also a forward pointing letter) W (like the waves on water, -and this is the cracker. Water IS DOMinant for human survival, WISDOM.
Travelling to the East makes people think. Pleased to meet you.
I'm glad I'm writing all this at 2am, otherwise it wouldn't make sense.
We left Talc Alf and went on to meet character No.2 for the day, part of the 'stolen generation' of aboriginal children, a guy named Reg. We went Maree, another one horse town with a small aboriginal museum that Reg and his family run. The stolen generation were a crossbreed of English/Australian settlers and full blood Aborigines. It was thought by the English elite, who didn't want to create a 'third race,' that the aboriginal blood could be 'bred out' of them.
Actually Just going off at a tangent I was shocked and overjoyed to be in the middle of the desert, so far from civilisation, when I walked into the (only) local shop that afternoon and a couple of old boys were watching 'Spaced' - possibly the best sitcom ever made!
Anyway, Reg showed us his collection of Aboriginal artefacts before we all headed off North into what used to be his tribe's land. He told us of the atrocities that were committed by the English/Australians, but also of how aboriginal culture worked before that. The earliest recorded paintings go back 60,000 years and their culture changed little through all that time. The 'Dreamtime' as it's wrongly called (by white people) is a collection of 'Creation Stories' made up by the ancient aboriginals to teach discipline and order to the next generation. For 60,000 years, hundreds of different clans never fought with each other and honoured the land using knowledge passed down to them. Whatever they needed, they didn't need to find it, they just went to where they knew it had always been through the stories. They also didn't have any maths. They could only count to three. They went One, Two, Three, Many.
On the way out to Alberrie Creek we stopped off at various places, including an old telegraph pole stump from the first global comms link to London! We found a dead lizard lying on top and Reg went and got his Lizard book so we could identify it. Here's Nick (the guide) with the book and Christer holding the lizard.
Shortly after, Reg saw a hole on the floor and started poking around in it with a stick saying, "I wonder what's in here? Maybe a scorpion or something?" Thankfully nothing came out.
A while down the road we were lucky to see some 'Brolgas' which are big swan-like, long billed birds who 'dance' when competing for a female. Its was pretty amazing to watch. Reg started singing an aboriginal brolga dancing song to it to encourage it to dance more (we had the chance to sit with him most of the time in his 4WD on that journey which was great.)
In case you were wondering why the desert looked so green, Australia has had its driest 18 months since records began and in the last two weeks they've suddenly had very, very heavy rain. Nick kept driving around going "I cant believe how green it is." This also seemed to have a explosive effect on the insect population too.
When we got to Alberrie Creek that night, I think everyone (including me) who bought a fly net was thankful. The flies over here seem to love anything that might be wet or have a bit of protein and fly straight for it. Eyes, ears (so many in the ears) mouths, noses, any food or drinks, if they can fly into it they will. Luckily they weren't around too long as they all go to sleep or die probably when the sun goes down.
When the sun goes down though you get something even worse. Stink Beatles. About the size of a quality street with legs and a shimmering green and black colour, if they feel threatened they secrete a really nasty smell. We had hundreds of them that night. They seemed to be attracted to the fire so they'd fly in from wherever they were and if you happened to be in their way, slam into you. It got to the point where I kept my hand over my mug of wine, as they'd regularly slam into my forehead or my neck (stink) then tumble either landing on my shirt (most of us had at least one inside our shirt at some point) or in my wine mug. TWICE they ended up in my drink. I was not happy. Luckily they liked the fire so they stayed away from the swags.
Anyway, getting past that, it was great to hear Reg telling Creation Stories around the campfire.
Reg and Me
