Ayers Rock
The weekend of 7-8 August, we rented a 4-wheel drive vehicle from the base and drove down to Ayers Rock and it gave me a good chance to see the area south of Alice Springs. The reason we used a base vehicle was because some of the roads we were. on were dirt and even though we did not really need a 4-wheel drive, the roads are hard on my little Datsun. Ayers Rock is 280 miles, by road, southwest of Alice Springs, and 32 miles of that is still dirt and rocks. Can you imagine a road to a major tourist attraction in the U.S. having a section that is dirt?
Ayers Rock is impressive. It's a large red rock, almost 2 miles long, 5 1/2 miles around and 1100 feet high and is all the more impressive sitting alone out in the middle of a flat plain. The Aborigines believe it fell from the sky and seeing its location, it's possible to think that is where it came from. The Rock is supposedly the largest monolith in the world, but there are still only so many things you can do with a rock: photograph it from different angles and at different times of the day (publicity about the Rock makes, a big-deal out of the colors it turns at sunset and sunrise, but we were not overly impressed with sunset so skipped sunrise); visit the Aboriginal caves around the base. (we did and weren't convinced that the paintings in them were original -' the paint seemed awfully bright to be old); and climb it.
From seeing all the T-shirts around town saying "I climbed Ayers Rock" and knowing that many people have climbed it, you are lulled into a false opinion that it is easy to climb. Wrong! It is very steep in places and is not easy. The route to the top is about a mile long and, like I said, goes up 1100 feet. The literature handed out in the park says not to be blase about the climb - 12 people have died doing it (four from falls and eight from heart attacks). We all started up, but Toby soon decided that it was too steep for him and he and Dorothy waited for the rest of us (Dwight, myself, and an Australian friend who went along). Ross and Dwight went on ahead while I panted and puffed convinced that I was going to be the ninth heart attack victim. The first part of the climb is so steep that the park has installed a chain handrail and I used it (and slid part of the way coming down). I guess it was worth it for getting different views of the Rock, but as for seeing in the distance, the country looks all the same no matter how far you can see. The only thing on the horizon was the Olgas.
We drove over to the Olgas on Sunday before returning home. The road over, about 20 miles one way was dirt. The Olgas are a group of rocks tike Ayers Rock, apparently formed during the same time period, but instead of one rock consist of numerous rocks with interesting shapes. Because we were on the way home, we didn't stay long. If I were to go back there I would spend most or all of my time at the Olgas, rather than at Ayers Rock.
Like I said, the trip gave us the chance to see much more of this part of the country then we'd seen before. Australia is almost the same size as the U.S. with less than a tenth of the population of the U.S., so although you can drive for miles in the U.S. without seeing many signs of
This part of Australia is called the Red Center and it's easy to see why. The earth is a vivid red, more so in some places than others and especially noticeable where there is a lack of vegetation. Dorothy likens the color, if not consistency, to the red clay of Georgia. As you drive along, you are struck by a variety of things; the distances and lack of towns, of course, but also by things like the lack of billboards (I saw three from just outside Alice to Ayers Rock, and small ones at that); apparently little fencing is used for stock anywhere in Australia, and we saw continual signs both during this trip and the trip in Queensland warning of wandering stock, as well as the cattle themselves in the middle of the road. (Incidentally, as late as 1964, there was one station here in Australia that had over seven million acres.) There is also a lack of paper trash along the road, possibly because it has blown away across the open plains, but there are many, many beer cans (called "tinnies" here) and bottles. (This is true much more here in the Northern Territory, than it was in Queensland.) And strangely enough, the change in scenery is striking, from very open range with clumps of low shrubs, to areas of quite a few large desert trees. There are also quite a few signs warning of floodplains, because, from what I've been told, when it rains here it can be very hazardous due to flash flooding, similar, I suppose, to Arizona. We have seen very little wildlife along the road, but there are many birds - budgies (very similar to parakeets), cockatoos, galahs, and other colorful birds (including a type of parrot). I believe to really see wildlife you have to be out either at sunset, sunrise or at night.
Notes from re-typing in 2011....
I recall finally getting to the top of Ayers Rock only to see Ross sitting there with a strange expression on his face. I asked him what was wrong and he said he forgot he was afraid of heights. I told him I was not going to ask the rangers to get him a helicopter.
We stayed in an old motel (the Inland Motel - long gone) that was so poorly constructed that the walls didn't come together well and you could see daylight out through the comer. But at least it had a bit of heat in it. Ross had decided to take his swag to the campground (presumably the one Azaria Chamberlain was "taken by a dingo") and the next morning we had to pick him up and defrost him on the radiator in our room. . . .
On the way to the Rock from Alice Springs we stopped at a roadhouse to get a drink and Ross asked if that place-was a culture shock to us. I told him no, the culture shock was the dirt road out in front of the place going to a major tourist attraction.
When I managed to get to the top of the chain handrail on the Rock, I sat there puffing and some elderly gentleman with a cane sauntered past me and said Hello.
Now that an Aboriginal organization owns the park there has been talk about a ban on climbing Ayers Rock, but it hasn't happened yet. If they did that they might not be able to collect the large fees they charge for entering the park.
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