But when you compare America's busting 306 million residents to Australia's meager 21.6 million, you begin to see that this place is freaking deserted - literally. For the vast majority of the flat, dry interior, there is nothing. A documentary once told me that Australia has the most area of land, besides Antarctica, that has never been traversed by modern man. That means that there could conceivably be giant chunks of gold - or anything really - just laying around in the middle of this place where we're just to fragile and uninterested to venture extensively. Imagine what awaits us...
Part of the allure and experience of visiting Alice and Uluru is that they are a couple of the only places nestled safely in the heart of this vast empty place where people have braved the elements and wrestled nature back enough to install a few lousy shacks with air conditioning, which, they realized early on, is the only way to lure more people out there. Here's a map showing Uluru's (Ayer's Rock's) location in Aus; you will notice Melbourne and Sydney safely perched on the south east corner of the continent (their combined inhabitants accounting for 40% of the population).So, I was happy to explore one of the only reasons a sane person would ever have to venture to this remote place: The Big Red Rock.
And a big red rock it was. We actually didn't do a whole lot with this rock - we viewed it at two sunsets and one sunrise (yes, we're crazy) when it is famed to be at it's most orang-y, but didn't do a whole lot else. You can climb the rock, but the Aboriginals ask you not to; you can walk around the rock, but why walk when you can drive?; and you can take helicopter rides to get a sweet arial view, but we all know that I'm too cheap for that. More pics are here.
About an hour drive from Uluru is a group of similar rocks called The Olgas. Here, there are many rocks instead of just one, though none are as large as the one big rock. The Olgas (or Kata Tjuta in Aboriginal language) makes for good hiking (supposedly better than Uluru itself), so we spent the better part of our single day in this area hiking around here.
The temperature was hot, but since it can easily get up to 120+ degrees, I wasn't complaining about the dry 90 or so that we experienced. It did make for an excellent night's sleep after that hike though, I'll surely testify to that.Around Uluru there is a singular resort - you must stay here if you come to see the rock. There are a variety of places to stay (hotel, apartment, camping) and a few restaurants, but the place has a bit of a deserted, 1980's-out-of-style feel to it that I found to be a bit creepy. Plus, the only people in the entire area are tourists, which is at once awkward and comforting.
But even stranger than Ayer's Rock itself is the gateway city which lies a cool 400 miles away: Alice Springs. To fly to Uluru, you must first fly to Alice Springs. Flights do not go directly from Melbourne to Uluru - either that or if they do, they're ridiculously expensive, I can't remember. We got a bargain at $500 a person to fly Melbourne-Alice Springs-Uluru and back again. Four flights in four days - good times. A discussion about the current developments in airport security is an entirely different blog entry.
Alice is a tiny little run down town that appears to be barely breathing with a small but apparently adequate flow of tourists to sustain it. Don't even ask me what the 26,000 people who live there are doing, I can't even imagine. The nearest town of a equal or larger population is a clean a thousand miles away. Who does the high school soccer team play against?
I've seen small desert towns in America - this is certainly not a phenomenon isolated to this country, though The Alice is arguably far more isolated than most other similar towns around the globe. Still, this is not the strangest thing about Alice, as I saw it. All around town you find Aboriginal people just lounging around. Understand that in big Australian cities (such as our Melbourne), Aboriginals are a rare sighting. Their plight is similar to that of the Native Americans in that they have sort of been trampled on, tossed aside, and left to the plights of poverty and alcoholism, with no real place in the Western world around them.
And so, they rarely are able to afford life or even a visit to the big cities and remain scattered in tiny communities around mostly the north and middle of the country, where no one else will venture. But in Alice, these people are everywhere. I was hoping to really experience their culture and style with this juxtaposition, but instead it's more like herds of homeless people roaming the town, some selling paintings by the sidewalks, others drunk, and most just minding their own business laying in the shade. I found it a bit unsettling and didn't really know how to deal with it.
I sort of automatically turned on "homeless person defense mode" when a man tried to coax me over to view the painted canvas he had spread out next to him on the red brick cobbles of the city square. I'm not sure how good their English is, in general, and they're all dressed like vagabonds. I sort of felt sorry for them, but really only because I couldn't discern if they were happy or not. I felt very awkward being one of the "rich white people" arriving to exploit their land and give them superior smug glances. I need a book about it to learn what's really behind the blank faces and unkempt persona of the meandering Aboriginals of Alice. Or, if I weren't such a weirdo, maybe I could have just talked to them.
But alas, it was certainly an interesting experience. And even if some of the Aboriginals of Alice are down on their luck, I know that there is a rich Aboriginal culture surviving around the country, which people are starting to grasp, respect, and attempt to preserve. Alice and the Rock, thanks for having us.
1 comment:
How about "Rabbit Proof Fences" for a fine view of the native people and the presumed superiority of the English and their grand plan for the native children? It's important to note when this plan was terminated...
Unclejohn
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