The Ghan, Line Dancers, Massive Old Rocks and A Bit Of A Large Canyon

Hia! Ok so next update of the travels...

I have done the following things so I can tick them off my bucket list:

• Travelled on a train for over 25 hours
• Met real life line dancers
• Been to Uluru and learnt about aboriginal culture
• Sat on the very edge of the cliff at Kings Canyon
• Been to a camel race

What a bloody busy time I have had I tell you. I will keep it brief because I have SO much to catch up on but this week of being in Alice Springs was great and it was all thanks to a group of "oldies" I met on The Ghan and The Rock Tour's group and group leader.

I put oldies in quotation marks because they are far from it in spirit. I believe they were all aged between 60 and 80, there were 11 of them, and they all know each other because they have line danced with each other for years.. how amazing is that! They kept me properly entertained on what would have otherwise been a grueling 25 hour train ride with lude remarks about fellow male travellers, by teaching me how to play yatzee, telling me all about their lives and how many kids, grandkids and great grankids they have, and just overall being awesome. They were such good fun. I nearly shat myself at one point though.. Trish who was sat next to me on this sleeper train was fast asleep - as was 97% of the train - and I was just about to doze off myself when from nowhere, Trish turns in her sleep, leans over me and goes "HAHAHA!" right in my face before settling back down and going straight back to sleep. Immediately wide eyed, mouth open in horror stance, body facing and arms clinging to wall with head almost owl liked swivelled to face my night time goblin I started to breathe again. I didn't go to sleep for the rest of the night though.. seriously.

Me and the crew on The Ghan

Alice Springs is an odd place. It's nice and full of vibe but it's also a bit scary because of the amount of drunk aboriginal people there are. This will sound horribly racist but it's fact - the drunk ones shuffle towards you like zombies. It is really, really creepy and I didn't like it at all. Their hands and arms dangle loosely by their sides, their mouths are drooped open and drooling, and they just shuffle without picking up their feet. And almost most of them have dirty damaged clothing on which really emphasises the zombie look.. I know for a fact not all aboriginals in Alice Springs are drunks but I didn't see any.... such a shame.

Me in the crack of Alice

But I didn't go to Alice Springs to check them out.. I came to do what ever single other backpacker does and that is go to Uluru. The trip started amazingly well - Matt (tour guide from Leeds.. ANOTHER LEEDS SIGN!) ran over a kangaroo. The thud was sickening..They are bloody big animals they are!! Poor kanga..

Sun setting in front of Uluru.. Beer in hand

The rest of the tour was brilliant though. The rock was lovely and the stories that go with it were quite sweet... ridiculous in our culture of course and you have to remember they are childrens stories. We weren't told any adult stories because quite simply, only the very high ranking members of the aboriginal society know them.. we white europeans aren't privvy.. which makes it all the more frustrating!! I want to know what secrets this rock holds and why it is sacred. Did you know that the stories behind it have not been written down by aboriginal people and that the majority of the rock has never been photographed/published because you can't take photos of the sacred parts?? I didn't. But if you think about it, it makes sense. I bet you have only really seen the one side of Uluru in the pictures.

Uluru at sunset

We saw Uluru during the day, at sunset and again at sunrise. Sunrise was my favourite I think.. sunset it's meant to change colours and someone told me glimmer... that so doesn't happen. A shadow descends which is why the colour "changes" and there was no shimmery shinyness. Buggers.

We couldn't go to Kata Tjuta on day two because the "controlled" bush fires were out of control... which was a bit gutting but it didn't matter really because instead we went witchetty grub hunting! FUCK-INGGGGG gross is what they are if any of you were wondering. Aboriginal women.. and therefore us for the day.. would go to a specific tree, dig up its roots and look for a bulge in them. If there was a bulge, they were rip the root out and there inside would be a grub (which is the larvae of a moth). I had fun digging until my digging stick snapped in half and went straight through my thigh. That really hurt. And there was blood.

Clever photography by Matt, I am being pulled out of Nutella

Kings Canyon was absolutely stunning. Breath taking doesn't really sum up. We climbed it in the dark before sunrise so we could watch it come up over the canyon. Even in the dark it was beautiful. I of course took some posey ones and my favourite was me sitting on the very edge with a massively massive drop below. It looks like I might have been there for hours pondering and being mysterious.. what really happened is I ran over there lobbing my camera at another woman on the tour and shouted back "take a photo of this would you!!", almost fell down before striking a pose. 7 seconds later I was back on my feet running to get my camera, very pleased with the result. Wish I could have stayed longer but ah well. Tours must stick to schedules and had I stayed longer I really would have been blown by the wind off the cliff. I would have been blogging with 78 broken bones I would imagine.

 Sitting on Kings Canyon

I also, very luckily, got to be in town for the annual Camel Cup race, which is horse racing but with camels. BRILLIANT idea! Matt was taking part so figured I would go check it out and had a good time watching him being full on launched off. Panicked for a moment as I thought he was dead but mayyyy have had a wee giggle when I realised he wasn't paralised ;-P sorry Matt xx

Matt's camel.. minus Matt

And then it was off to Darwin.. back on The Ghan with my line dancers... but that's another blog.

Cheerio.