Uluru, the experience begins

The first glimpse of Uluru is an iconic experiences. It looms in the distance like a big turtle shell, a giant crown of a hat...You see it in the open flat plain and deduce that it must be big. But how big?

Bigger than you ever imagined. And far more complex. It is convoluted and full of fissures, caves, rock pool, utter cathedrals of stone, secret areas where women gave birth, other areas where men painted their stories claiming this land as the land of their ancestors living now and forever.

Uluru is one, singular large piece of compressed sandstone, tipped on its side. The striations are vertical on Uluru. Like an iceberg, more of it is below ground than above.

The Olgas or Kata Tjuta

I had heard of the Olgas, whose true name is Kata Tjuta, but I did not know what to expect. I just knew that many people said they were even more magnificent than Uluru.

We first saw them at a distance, looking like so many heads peeking up through the ground.When we got closer, we could see the red and purple colors of the rock. Deep canyons full of stories. Kata Tjuta is a series of conglomerate rocks of monolith proportions that are incredible.

In the presence of these rocks, and Uluru, one can understand how religions were formed here. When one is in the presence of the Earth's awesome power on such a scale, you cannot help but feel puny and awestruck. Kata Tjuta is the site of the male ancestors, male stories, male business. Business means male ceremony/ritual sites, secret sites where Aboriginal women are not even allowed to look.

Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park

The desert and camels on the way to Uluru

We left Alice Springs by buswatching for kangaroos> which we did not see, and feral camels, which we did see. In addition to the wild camels,we stopped at a camel farmwhere I experienced my oneand only camel ride that I expect to take in my lifetime, even if I do return to Egypt! Oy, it was rough! While I am sure that one can adjust to the lumpiness of the camel gait, it would be easier if the stirrups were properly adjusted. We no sooner took off than the stirrup flew off my right foot, making it really difficult to control the movement of my body in the saddle. The drover did not hear me, or chose not to hear me (hysterical woman, etc.). I finally gained stability by stretching my stirup-less foot out staight, with firm, locked knee. Had a few back twitches for days afterwardsThe trip across the desert was beautiful and austere.We saw birds of prey galore.We stopped at the huge salt lake I had seen from the airplane, climbing a sand dune for the blinding view.

Outback Barbeque

We had the opportunity to attend an Outback Barbeque...a tourist inspired extra. The setting was starkly beautiful, set in a bowl, a rather high flat area surrounded by sheer red rock. A presentation on boomerangs was given byDenny, a jackeroo, or cowboy. He was goodlooking, I will give him that. But he was rather rude and sort "phoning it home." There is a habit of speech in the outback that contributed to the night. Because of the swarms of flies (blessedly, almost miraculously absent for us) people speak with clenched teeth lest they eat too many bugs. Denny stood over the roaring fire, with clenched teeth, speaking in a normal tone of voice to around 50 people who were my age or older. I asked him to speak louder. He responded,"Move!" A few of us did, but I know there were many who could not hear.This man, whose name I forget, gave a brilliant talk about Aboriginal traditions and did a star talk at the end of the evening. Seeing the Southern Cross for the first time was awe inspiring.The menuwas tough steak, baked potatoes, sausage, some kind of salad, and damper bread, cooked in a buried dutch oven...the best part of the meal. The evening ended with songs and hi-jinks around the fire.

The flies were absent because of a confluence of meteorology and grasshoppers. I guess there has been more rain than usual, more green food, a swarm of grasshoppers came and ate the grasses leaving no where for the flies to lay their eggs....or something like that. In any case, we were lucky. Otherwise we would have had flies at our eyes, our nostrils, the corners of our mouths. more photos on Flikr

Desert Park in Alice Springs

In and about Alice, we saw our first kangaroo, crested pigeon, gallahs, and magpies and it was warm enough for the gum trees to give off their delicious eucalyptus scent. We visited the extraordinary School of the Air and the Alice Springs Telegraph station.

I spent much of the second day at the Desert Park. Only the morning was scheduled, but several of us stayed longer since the afternoon was free. The birds of prey demonstration was spectacular. Do I remember the names of any of the birds? NO!!! But I bought a guide and marked them off. I so got into watching the birds in Australia. What struck me first, before their uncommon beauty, was the birdsong: new and different. There were, of course, magpies and bower birds, honey somethings and rainbow bee-somethings; gullahs and black cocatoos; buggies. I also attended about an hour lecture by an aboriginal guide, named Doug, at the park about survival skills of the aboriginal peoples. Doug was from the Arrende people of Central Australia. The returning boomerang was not used here, nor was the didgeridoo. The returning boomerang is an east coast style, used in bird hunting to flush out the water birds. Boomerang technology is over 10,000 years old. the Arrende boomer is heavier, curved at one end, designed to break the leg bones of kangaroos and emu...and people, in war time. Spears were also used, the heads attached with fresh kangaroo achilles tendon that dries and shrinks to hold the point tightly. They also used spear throwers to extend the range, nulla nulla or club with a quartz head that could also be thrown. All tools were multipurpose, for hunting, gathering, preparing the ground to sit etc. Women carried spears, digging sticks, a coolamon bowl and maybe a dilly bag. Winnowing was key because some husks were poison. the dilly bag was used for collecting as well and for rinsing out toxins. A quote from his father about the importance of the stories,"If you know the song, you know plenty." He described women as of equal importance to the survival of the group, of equal but different power within the group. He talked about marriage rules...too complicated for me to remember...that prevented inbreeding. Breaking the marriage rules would result in banishing or worse. Children are raised by the "Aunties," a group of adult women including your birth mother and her relations (relations in Aboriginal groups are different than for us...but think aunts, great aunts, some cousins depending on the marriage relation). He said that children "run feral" until 6 or 7 years old. Initiation and scarring is still practiced to some extent. He said it teaches discipline ...and each scar represents a lesson: you look at it and you remember.

We got a ride home fron the Desert Park with an Aussie named Michael who had a huge shotgun shell hanging from his rearview mirror.. Born in Italy, but raised in Australia,He was in Alice on holiday with the Masons. He lives normally in Adelaide. It seems that the Freemasons were in Alice Springs to celebrate the raising of a statue to a pioneer by the name of Stuart. Stuart was a good sort, kind to the natives. But, politically correct types had a fit about placing the statue in the town square because the statue was holding a rifle. The man Stuart never used the rifle to subdue the natives. So, the town council has taken it under advisement and has not raised the statue as yet. So, Michael stayed to party anyways. Among other things, he said he was a conservationist. I asked what that meant. He goes out to the cattle stations to shoot feral cows. When the stations changed over mustering from horses to helicopters, they discovered up to 25% more cattle who had gone feral. Or maybe he meant camels? They are a problem as well. Ran into him later that evening at Bojangles Pub.

On to Alice Springs

More or less rested, more or less adjusted to missing a day and walking upside down...we boarded an airplane for Alice Springs. It is easy to forget that Australia is a country and a continent. Flying to Alice Springs was like flying to Los Angeles...lots fasterthan driving.Flying over vast landscapes of changing colors, over chemical lakes, sand dunes, mountain ranges...all severe. You can see the water courses from the air, even where there is no visible water: follow the trail of the plants.

Alice Springs was begun in the 19th century with a telegraph station at a spring that was subsequently named after the station master's wife, Alice. At the telegraph station I became more interested in the birds. I looked through Judy's good binoculars at this gallah, the ubiquitous bird of down under. They steal food even more blatantly than the seagulls.

The station was the center of operations for communication, mail, medicine, commerce that was brought in by the Europeans. This was one of the areas where there was little hunting of the Aboriginals, thankfully, although their lives were changed for the worse through disease, abuse, and the destruction of their ecologically sensitive and sacred lands. Throughout the history of the Europeans in Australia, there was a mis-understanding of how Aboriginal society worked, and indeed, worked well. The Aboriginal world view was essentially spiritual with the land as sacred and cared for with serious responsibility by those who were mature enough and wise enough to hold the stories and the rituals that would maintain the land in the Dreamtime, the present and the future all at once.Time, for the Australian Aboriginal was circular and ongoing, much like the Inuit.

There are over 300 language groups (tribes) of Aboriginal peoples. The languages can be remarkably different...not just dialects. Language, symbol and sign language were used to communicate over territories. Aboriginal art was part of the communication systems. Today it is on canvas and in bright colors, painted for the burgeoning art market. However, its roots remain practical : describing food sources and locations, seasonal changes, rituals and ceremonies or stories necessary for the maintenance of the land, in some areas mortuary concerns are also a topic. Shields and barks were carved or burned with information that identified your language group, your territory, your family affiliations (sometimes called skin groups) and acted as your passport or calling card. Sometimes bodies were painted with this information as well to help insure safe travels through foreign territories.

As soon as we entered Alice Springs we went to Mbantua Gallery. Mbantua is one of many, many galleries in town. As far as I can tell they all have honest relations with the artists. Most of them give the artists their materials and purchase the finished product outright and pay a further fee upon sale of the painting from the gallery. the painting above is the one I bought.It is by Pauline Morgan Petyarre. Pauline speaks little English. She has been painting for about 10 years. This piece refers to the Pencil Yam Story of the dreamtime, where 2 seeds were born creating 2 different species of pencil yam. The tubers are an important food source and the plant also attracts kangaroos. Pauline and her people perform increase ceremonies to ensure the productivity of the yam.

Alice Springs is a dusty, windy place, raw looking. It was quite cool, since it was winter, but you can feel in your bones that summer would be a scorcher! The air was desert dry, most of us had bloody noses by the time we left the area a few days later. The whole center of town is devoted to Aboriginal arts. It is BIG BUSINESS. The different galleries represent artists from different area, but dominantly in desert dot style here. Many are either fully Aboriginal owned or have boards of directors which include the artists. The galleries are mostly attached to art centers in the outback which function as production facility, store, bank, medical supply, welfare...Art is the primary employment, especially for the women, in the outback areas that maintain a more traditional or isolated lifestyle. Supposedly it is well controlled and not exploitive.

Before we went to Bojangles Pub for a mixed grill of crocodile,bison (water buffalo), kangaroo, camel & emu, we fed the rock wallabies at the Heavitree Gap Outback Lodge. It claims to be a premier resort, but in the dark...it looks like an old style Holiday Inn motel. It is situated at a gap in the McDonnell Ranges where black footed rock wallabies live. At sunset, they descend from their rocky home to eat. It you sit very still and remain very quiet, they will feed from your hand. One young girl communed with "her" wallaby for such a long time that she could stroke it. Two wallabies had joeys in the pouch. It was interesting to see them contract the pouch to protect their young when alarmed. I had never thought of the pouch as having volitional muscles! I thought it was just a stretchy pocket of skin.

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Sabbatical: Melbourne

What does one do with a sabbatical? August 3, 2010 I got on an airplane and flew to Melbourne, Australia to meet my "new best friends," otherwise known as my tour mates on a Grand Circle Tour of Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. Australia, and the Outback/Red Center in particular, have been on my bucket list for years and years.Many years ago, long before I moved to Minnesota, I went to the SOFA Fair in Chicago and saw my first Australian Aboriginal Art, in the flesh, so to speak. I saw dot paintings of the central desert (The blurry jpg above is x-ray style from northern groups). I was blown away. I think I had been at least vaguely aware of Aboriginal Art before. But seeing the real thing ignited a hunger in me to learn more and see more and to GO THERE. It took probably 15 years to get there...but I am soglad I did.

The trip got off to an inauspicious start! By the time I got to Los Angeles I had lost my Target brand watch, left all my art & journal supplies and and my reading glasses in my living room and had my knee high stockings lose their elastic and fall down! Somehow I managed to get on the plane with a lined journal(which I mostly filled!), a ball point pen and a new watch and effortlessly pass over the international date line and the equator. Can't say I felt any different for it, other than not knowing what day it was. They said it was August 5.

Melbourne architecture is really, really interesting: an unusual blend of styles.Row houses with ornate ironwork reminiscent of San Francisco (this is a brothel); moorish architecture; victorian,edwardian and utterly modern. We did a brief orientation walking,free tram tour. We ate at Victoria Market, which is a huge semi open air market that reminds me of Chelsea Market in NYC. We had world famous sausage there. Then Susan Pomerantz, from Toronto, and I went blasting off on foot to find me art supplies which I found next to the art school(of course)and to go see Federation Square and the rail terminal.Federation Square looks like it might have been built by the same architect as the new Walker. It is beautiful trapezoidal angles and openwork in colors to remind the Australians of their land. Like our new Walker, it has been very controversial and like our new Walker has become a gathering place. It houses among many other things the National Gallery of Victoria where we saw some awe inspiring Aboringinal art and some awe inspiring contemporary art and some less inspiring (to me) 19th and early 20th century art.

On the second day I went to the Melbourne Art Fair, rather like the Navy Pier Show in Chicago. It was full of the biggest and best galleries in the southern hemisphere. What a treat. I saw magnificent Aboriginal art as well as whitefella art. Lots looked like art anywhere...but some seemed to reflect the Australian experience more. Melbourne did not feel foreign...maybe European...certainly cosmopolitan. It was clean, stylish and friendly.

On the third day we arose before dawn to fly to Alice Springs and the Red Center.

Note 1: Melbourne is pronounced Mel-Bunn...no "R" sound

Note 2: prostitution is legal in Australia and New Zealand, hence the brothel.

Note 3: The iron lacework was seen all over town on many 19th cen houses, not just on the brothel It became the fashion when the ships left their pig iron ballast behind.

Note 4: even in the big city the skies sounded different. The bird song was noticeably different.

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