Belated update... Alice Springs and beyond!
Well, this entry is pretty delayed, but I wanted to make sure that I didn’t end this blog without writing about my amazing two-week trip through Victoria, the outback, and the northern territory. I took pretty extensive notes during the trip, and I’ll be happy to share longer stories with anyone who wants to hear them, but here’s the Cliff Notes version.
I had a two-week break between the end of classes and my first final exam, so I decided to throw concerns about study time and money to the wind and have an adventure. First, I took off to Melbourne, from whence I went on a day tour of the Great Ocean Road and another of the Grampians. The basics of that adventure are discussed in the previous entry.
From there, I flew to Alice Springs, where I had a free day there during which I met some really cool people from Holland and rested up. Then, at 6:10 the next morning, I started my nine day “safari” trip.
The nine-day trip is really a series of three three-day trips: one around the red center and then back to Alice springs, one from Alice to Darwin, and one around Kakadu national park and surrounds that finishes back in Darwin. You could visualize it as two circles connected by a line. The guides and the vehicles change, but many of the people on the trip stay the same. Actually, me and some of my friends pleaded with our guides to let us stay together for the last three-day leg and managed to get our way, but I’ll talk more about these friends in a second.
During the trip around the red center, I learned a lot about the geology of the area, which is fascinating, as well as a little about the botany (fascinating to me at least) and a fair amount (although never enough) about the traditional culture. One thing I want everyone to know: Ularu (Ayer’s Rock) is NOT the only thing to see in this area! Although this is certainly a really cool geological phenomenon and an important cultural site, there’s also Kata Tjuta and King’s Canyon, which are less crowded and (I think) better hiking venues. Also, my irritation at the whole idea of climbing Ularu only increased as I learned more about the reasons why the traditional owners of the land don’t want you to do it, and why it’s still open. Apparently, when the government finally “gave back” the land to the people who had owned it for a good long time before white people showed up, they made leaving the climb open a condition of this “deal.” The thing is, bottom line, Ularu is a sacred site, the location of several important Tjukurpa (what we sometimes call “dream time”) stories, and it’s not appropriate to climb it. On top of this, the owners consider the climb to be dangerous, and several people have indeed died while attempting it. This is also deeply hurtful to the aboriginal people who own the land because they feel it is their duty to protect and care for anyone who visits their land – the deaths and injuries that have occurred during the climb are therefore regarded as failures on the part of the traditional owners to act according to their Tjukurpa. What I don’t understand here is why in the world anyone would still want to do the climb. It says “please don’t climb” on every pamphlet and billboard, including one placed right in front of the gate to the climbing path. So why would anyone ever still have a desire to do it? How can you look at yourself after you blatantly, flagrantly disregard the desires of the people who have welcomed you to their land? And this all comes back to what seems to be a major theme in this entire experience abroad: I have a lot to learn about the essential thoughtlessness of human beings. As depressing as it is, I think this is an important thing to understand. If I approach people as if they are thoughtful and considerate when this isn’t actually true, it will probably cause breakdowns in communication. It’s also causing me to think more carefully about my own actions, because I hope to do whatever small part I can to pull up the average thoughtfulness of the population. Of course, the discussion above is problematic because the land in the US shouldn’t/doesn’t belong to white people either. I’m basing my indignation on arbitrary systems of law which were set in place by the very invaders I’m acting so indignant about. So I also need to make sure not to reduce situations to black and white arguments. I’m working on it.
Whew. Anyway, enough of that… for now. Mwa ha ha.
I should mention that during two night of every three-day trip, we slept outside either in swags or in little cabins, and cooked communally in these super-cool camp kitchens Adventure Tours has set up at its camp sites. It was awesome.
So on the next stage of our journey, we headed out from Alice again and went north towards Darwin. This part involved a LOT of driving and only a few really cool things to see, but it was still a good experience and cheaper than flying. I spent most of the time in the car learning a little bit of German from and teaching a little bit of American slang and conversational English usage to my new German and Swiss friends, who I mentioned briefly before. I have lots of stories about them, but for now I’ll just say their names are Johanna, Silke, and Seraina, and I’m so glad we ended up on the same tour. If the whole Ularu climb thing strengthened my suspicions that humanity is essentially thoughtless and cruel, they did their bit to help counteract it. I think maybe I was raised in the wrong culture. These three girls were just so much more, well, like me, than any of the Americans or Australians I had met up to that point. They all seem to value consideration, politeness, openness, and emotional honesty – values I missed very, very much during my whole time in Australia – at least as highly as I do. There were even little things I discovered I had in common with them that I rarely mention in the US because people tend to think I’m weird if I do. For example, when Seraina and her family were staying in Sydney, we went out to dinner and ended up staying out pretty late. Seraina offered that if I missed my train, I could sleep with her in her bed at the hotel, because it was more than big enough for two people. At first, I kind of laughed, because if I’d heard that from an American I’d only known for a couple of weeks, even if I considered her a friend, I would assume she was joking. After I realized that she was being serious, I was so happy and surprised to discover my family isn’t as freakish as life in America has led me to believe. I sometimes share a bed with my sister, my mother, or my close female friends, but other Americans usually view this with at least a touch of uneasiness. I also got more hugs and kisses on the cheek during the week and half I spent with these three girls and the several days I spent with Seraina and her family in Sydney than I had during the entire rest of the trip (except when my mom was there). It was so nice! Australians, I think, even though they might pack themselves into closer spaces than we usually do in the US (like my example of people sitting across from me at my table) are still sometimes a bit stand-offish when it comes to actual physical contact.
In terms of actual sites and activities, the highlights of this stage of the trip were a cruise through Katherine Gorge, learning to do dot painting from an aboriginal woman with the English name of Angela, and swimming at a beautiful waterfall when we started getting into the Northern Territory.
Finally, we headed out from Darwin on the last stage of our trip. This part was even more amazing than the rest. For one thing, our guide was extremely experienced and probably one of the best guides I have had or will ever have, ever. He knew a TON about the land and its traditional cultures, and he just had amazing leadership skills. The best parts about this stage were seeing a ton of different styles of rock art and hearing the stories behind the paintings, and spending the whole last day swimming in a variety of beautiful water holes. Only one of these was actually on the itinerary – our guide took a vote about the other ones and we decided to take his recommendations over the schedule printed in our brochures. The one on the itinerary was okay but really crowded. The other two were AMAZING and we had them pretty much to ourselves.
Okay, if I go on much longer, this will cease to be a Cliff Notes version. This may or may not be my last post. I hope you’ve all enjoyed reading these sporadic updates!
- Hannah