Day 1 - Uluru

Is that an elephants bum?

Nah - it is Uluru at sunset.

Just a few of the few hundred people watching the sunset. Pete (my brother), Ryan and Nada (both in blue, friends from Canberra)

After a 5 hour drive, we arrived at Uluru where we did an afternoon walk around half of the base of the rock. None of us wanted to climb it which is permitted by not encouraged.

 

Uluru is the biggest rock in the world. It rises 348 metres above the flat desert and 2.5 km below the ground! It is awesomely huge and very rusty. It gets its reddish colour from oxidisation on its surface. It is grey inside under the rust. Also know as Ayers Rock, so named by a European explorer in 1873 after the South Australian governor of the day.

It is a mystical place of great spiritual significance to the Aboriginal people. It is an impressive geological feature and I could feel its spiritual presence as we wandered around the track gazing up at it.

 

 

Way way out back

Central Oz holiday Part One - 5 day camping tour with http://www.wayoutback.com.au/

Great way to see the main sites. A LOT of driving - we began with a 5 hour drive from Alice Springs to Uluru. Each day included 3 or 4 hours of driving. Australia is a BIG country.

 

We loved Kirra! Yes - Kirra is our tour truck's name.

Camping in glamping tents and sleeping under the stars in swags.

The desert night sky is truly beautiful with a spectacular number of visible stars due to no light pollution.

 

 Telling stories around the camp fire.

 "Wolf Creek " was brought up the first time our guide, Annabelle, drove us off road, deeper and deeper in to the mulga...were we to be doomed to a  quick but gruesome death or would we suffer a long slow death stranded and lost in the desert?

 

 No - just collecting firewood - essential as all our food was cooked on an open camp fire.

Annabelle's cooking was very good, lots of food all cooked in big dutch ovens on the open fire. She made the best damper I think I've ever tasted.

Whatever floats your boat

My little brother turned 50 earlier this year and decided he'd like an Aussie outback holiday to celebrate.  So, along with his partner, and two friends, we flew to Alice Springs on August 16, which just happened to be the day of the ridiculously nutty Henley-on-Todd Regatta. A regatta is a day of boat racing which usually requires something called "water". This is us crossing the Todd River. Not a drop of wet stuff anywhere.

Alice Spring's water is generally located well below ground surface which makes it a little difficult to float a boat. The Todd River only flows for a few days each year. If it did flow in August, the regatta would be cancelled!

The regatta involves racing boats with the bottoms cut out, carried by people running. There is also good commentary, lots of pirates, vikings and sailors walking around in the crowd, and a not small amount of alcohol involved. The final event is a flour bomb and water cannon battle between three large boats built around trucks manned by pirates, vikings and the navy. The winners are decided by the loudness of the audience cheering and applause.  Run by the Rotary Club since 1962, is their major fund raiser and a great community event.

 

A Nine Wombat Day

It had been a while since my last wanderings in my favourite part of the world, ie. my own backyard of Cradle Mountain. Well, only about six weeks but it is a place I find I need to retreat to regularly to refresh. So my friend Sheryl and I resisted the temptation to sleep in on Sunday and headed for a day of wandering, and what a day it was!

It was a little cold! There had been a heavy frost over night. Even late in to the afternoon little patches of ice and frost persisted in some places.

 Sun shining on reeds and ice crystals patterning the surface of a mountain tarn.

 

There was not a cloud in the sky all day until the sun began to drop near to the horizon. We bathed in the sunshine (not literally, obviously) and breathed in lung-fulls of clean crisp air as we walked about 12 kms around Lakes Crater, Lilla and Dove, and up to Marion's Lookout and back to Ronnies Creek. I do not know how people can not believe in God on a day like this in a place like this. 

Near Ronnies Creek, where our wanderings for the day began and ended we saw a total of nine wombats, quite a good score. This pretty blonde was quite happily munching away just a metre from the board walk.

The day ended perfectly back at the visitor centre café with coffee and sweet potato wedges (yam fries, if you are Canadian) - OH WOW!!!! They were SO GOOD! A prefect ending to a truly magical Tasmanian winter day. A 9 wombat kind of day!

Art and sand

A weekend of wandering around just a small part of the east coast of Tasmania.

Yes! This is Tasmania! In winter! OK - so it looks warm and sunny, but, I admit, it was also quite cold!

 

My only memory of visiting St Helens in the past, is of my Grandma buying me an ice cream in a cone when I was little. It is quite a nice seaside town of bays, beaches and fishing boats.  (Above: St Helens is to the right behind the sand dunes and the bay.)

 

I had never been to the Bay of Fires, recognised as one of the world's best beaches. The sand is incredibly soft and white. I have never felt anything like it anywhere else.

Thanks to my friend for the introduction to St Helens and its surrounding beaches. It was a short visit to one of the world's most beautiful areas.

A few photos....

St Helens

What you lookin' at?

Beautiful sunset at St Helens.

Over the Queens Birthday long weekend St Helens hosts the Bay of Fires Arts Festival, which includes the Bay of Fires Art Prize, a youth art prize, night time projections, films, and an arts and craft market. The town was buzzing with activity.

 

What are they looking at?

Projected art at the Bay of Fires Art Festival - outdoors in the night time - yes, it was cold!

We also viewed the art prize exhibition, youth art exhibition and crafts at the market. Beautiful. Inspiring.

Bay of Fires

The only bikini babe in sight at Tasmania's iconic Bay of Fires and Binalong Bay.

A photo of my friend taking a photo of my friend taking a photo of...

A rainbow

And rocks and trees

More rocks

 

Beauty as far as the eye can see

 

 

South of St Helens 

Windswept beaches

 Shells and kelp

 Sand and grasses

Pounding surf with surfers

 



The Turning has begun

"Nothofagus gunnii. Decidious beech. Small yellow leaves with deep veins dividing the leaf into fourteen distinct segments. The only Australian native deciduous plant, it looks vibrant and spectacular across the alpine slopes of Cradle Mountain and Crater Lake in the autumn. The small yellow leaf contrasting against the white crystalline snow on to which it had fallen was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. So she thought as she lay there on the damp ground, with autumn flakes floating down around her. "

This is the opening paragraph of my short story "Nothofagus Gunnii Snow Fall" which is about a woman who has fallen and injured herself while bush walking. 

Last Sunday I spent the day wandering around Lake Hanson and the Twisted Lakes at Cradle Mountain. The fagus is just beginning to turn. In another two weeks, the slopes of the mountain will be covered in patches of yellow and orange. It is truly spectacular. Many people make it an annual pilgrimage to travel to either Cradle Mountain or Mt Field National Park to see the "turning of the fagus." I am blessed to live close enough to visit quite frequently whenever my itchy feet insist.

 

Cradle Mountain viewed from the east and reflected in one of the Twisted Lakes.



Wandering my backyard

I love my 'backyard' in Tasmania. Cradle Mountain is where I wander to rejuvenate. It fuels my creative juices and soothes my itchy feet when I cannot be wandering further from home.

Last weekend, I climbed to the top of Cradle Mountain and sat on the edge of the dolorite columns at the peak, gazing in awe at the view. 360 degrees of mountains upon mountains with the only signs of humans being the Overland Track below me and tiny people crawling along it. (oh - and all the other dozens of crazies like me who scrambled up to the top of the mountain too)

 

 It was harder than I expected to reach the top. I knew there was "rock scrambling" involved but some of the rocks were bigger than my legs and arms were long and it was quite the effort to pull myself up. If you look closely at the photo below you can just make out a woman sitting in the gap to the left of the tower of rock on the right. She is waiting for her husband to return from the peak. She was younger than me and decided that the climbing was too hard for her. The 'track' goes more or less straight down from where she is sitting and then up again past where I took this photo from. I took some comfort from her presence thinking that if I fell she would see me and get help.

The first white woman to climb Cradle Mountain was Kate Weindorfer in 1910, aged 46. She ascended wearing a long dress and multiple petticoats. How much harder it must have been for her than it was for me! But it is no wonder that her husband Gustav exclaimed, "It is magnificent! It must become a national park so people can enjoy it for all time to come."