Elad’s blog

Yehuda Amichai, who is one of my favorite poets, wrote in one of his least-known poems: “Observe the beauty of a sunset / even a physicists, who knows and understands / can just look at the sunset / and say how beautiful it is. ” (I hope his widow will forgive me for the poor translation).

Looking at Ayers-Rock, these words just floated into my mind.

I do know all the scientific explanations and geological theories. I could tell you that it is the summit of a buried mountain; that it is some 300 meters high and some 3.6 k”m in diameter ; that it is extremely sacred to the aborigins (and for what reasons) . I could explain how it was formed and why it became such a famous australian icon. But there is no need. Earth’s biggest single monolyth is just beautiful.

I attended it at the second of my three-day desert adventure, just after the desert had its full grasp on me, and the silence and the views took over completely. The first day was dedicated to Kata-Tjuta (”The Olgas”), a set of mountains near Ayers-Rock; the second was at Uluru (the aboriginal name of the rock); and the third was in Kings-Canyon. Add to this night camps in the tent with small fireplace under the stars, and some good company, and you get a really memorable experience.

Tony lost his head completely when he saw Emma. They did travel a bit together before he met me, and the guy is obviously loving her - he just behaved like a teenager every time she was near. She also seems to like him very much, and it was nice watching them exchanging wicked remarks and stuff. Trying to impress her, Tony even tried to cook my red rice one evening, which he failed to do most collosalically. This was the only time I let any of them cook - we returned to the normal arrangement, I cook (Tony to Emma: “we eat like kings!”) and they do the dishes.

The Olgas, Kata-Tjuta in their aboriginal name, are a set of oddly-shaped mountains some 20 k”ms from Uluru. We did a nice walk there (some 7 k”ms, the “velley of the winds”), and looked at the rounded hills and large creeks. The entire area is red soil. The redness of the place just catches you, especially at sunset and sunrise, on both we were looking at Uluru as it is coloured by the sun light, and changed from red to orange to brown and finally gives up and let the darkness surround it.

The aborigins ask not to climb Ayers-Rock. However, they don’t handle their business well. The problem is, it is to sacred for them that the reasons why you should not climb it are a secret; so they refer their appeal in a very childish manner, something like: “please don’t climb because if you fall and get injured or die you family will cry a lot and will be very sorry, and we - being the traditional landowners - fill responsible and will also be very sad”. They mention nothing about their beliefs, the DreamTime stories, and so forth; even the cultural centre gives only four dreamtime stories and doesn’t tell you in what exactly is the rock different or more important to the aboriginals than any other place in the desert - a real miss. Of course, it doesn’t work, and plenty of people climb the rock: Tony and Emma climbed, while I - having studied the significance in advance - stayed down and waited for them. After they returned (Tony got to the summit, Emma broke in the middle) we hiked around the rock - some 10 k”ms circumference. Again, everywhere there are signs of “sacred place” and in many pointed there are signs “please don’t photo this point”, but there is absolutely no explanation whatsoever about why it is such a special place to the locals.

During the hike I got surprised once, and it was a really big surprise: I found that in one point, at the base of the rock, there are a few aboriginal rock paintings. I didn’t expect this. Besides this, there are a few waterholes there, and the view is pretty extraordinary - if there hadn’t been a small vegetation around, it could easily fit into a film about extraterrestrials, make an excellent martian soil.

Which can’t be said about Kings Canyon, that we attended the following day. After Uluru, it wasn’t that special for me - just a nice 6 k”m desert walk, in a big canyon with a waterhole (they have the nerves to call this waterhole “Garden of Eden”. Really far fetching). We walked it extremely slowly, actually too slowly for me, because the two englishmen - who never attended deserts before - were completely thrilled with it, and considered it a top walk. I, like I mentioned, was less impressed, though it was very nice - what can be bad about hiking in the desert?

The canyon is wide, almost like a velley, and though it does have sheer walls they are not close to one another. On the top there are nice forck formations, and at the bottom there is some rare vegetation - all sorts of bushes that are leftovers from the dinosaur era, taking advantage of the permanent waterhole and the isolated environment. It is nice, but not exceptional: somewhat like a mixture of Judean Desert with the Eilat mountains.

We kept looking for our own animals there - the Rock-Rabbits (Tony’s) and Rock-Crocodiles (my own invention. If there are “freshies” and “salties”, why not “rockeys”, at the waterholes in the middle of the deserts?), and pissed Emma off with this - real fun. She, in turn, told us of some ignorant americans who bugged her when she was in Darwin (with questions like: “What is Ayers-Rock”. Among all the tourists in Australia, only an american can ask this question.). We get aklong together pretty good, it is ashame that Tony already promised the other girls they can go with us to Coober-Peddy, where we will head tommorow after the rodeo (he misunderstood her email before she joined us, and thought she already has a bus ticket to Adelaide), so we will probably separate tommorow morning.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 20th, 2005 at 8:35 and is filed under Travels, Australia Center and South. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.