Uluru (Ayers Rock)

I forgot just how far it really is between Alice Springs and Uluru. And I confess I’m having REAL troubles calling it Uluru. Having grown up calling it Ayers Rock, and having visited it and climbed as a kid, calling it Ayers Rock the whole time, suddenly calling it something completely different is really difficult. Lexie takes great joy in correcting us (quite firmly) whenever we get it wrong.

So we drove the long drive from Alice Springs and made our way to the Ayers Rock Campground (yeah – like THAT was helping my confusion..) where we had a powered site. Which was right in the middle of the unpowered section - I lived in a permanent state of confusion there!

We got a 3-day pass. Wondering yet again why the NT doesn’t have a parks pass. “You don’t have to pay entry anywhere” was the reason we were given for why they don’t have one. Except for Kakadu. Oh and Uluru. And just those two added up to $100 for 2 adults – a parks pass for WA was $88 for the family for the year!

The rock is incredible. Enormous and majestic and always there. It does something weird to the light and looks quite unreal – rather like it’s been cut out of somewhere else and pasted into this landscape. Wherever you are its there – looming on the horizon. We started with a drive around it, stopped to do a few of the short walks at the base of it and spent a mesmerizing hour or so watching the sunset over it.

We also spent some time at the ‘township’ of Yulara, which is actually one huge resort. They have numerous hotels and apartments in addition to the campgrounds, and a little town square of shops and supermarket. We checked out the visitor’s centre, which rather surprisingly wasn’t as interesting as we expected it to be. We are becoming visitor centre experts and obviously our expectations have been raised! We also checked out the Aboriginal Cultural Centre, which was enormous and out at the rock.

There were a number of artists on display, producing paintings. It all seemed rather ‘convenient’ and a bit false. I must say, the artworks being produced are all sold the second they are completed, so they are on a winner there. I rather liked being able to pick the artworks by their style and being able to recognize which community they came from before turning them over and reading the backs – thanks to our time spent in Alice and Darwin.

There is the opportunity to join an afternoon artwork activity where you can use the aboriginal symbols and dot technique to create an artwork of your own. It was rather expensive, and since we had a cupboard full of art supplies and a resource sheet of symbols, we decided to do our own artworks back at Bertha. It was unexpectedly windy and our campmat is now delightfully decorated in spilt brush splotches, but we all had fun. Isn’t that the main thing??

The West MacDonnell Ranges

We decided to take a day trip out to see the sights of the West MacDonnell Ranges while in Alice. I rather wanted to go out to Palm Valley, as I distinctly remember going there as a kid. Dad had to hire a 4WD and we went out for the day. I remember it as a long dive and a gorgeous oasis in the middle of the desert. I also wanted to see the town of Hermansburg, which sounds lovely, but it was a whole other day trip and we really can’t do EVERYTHING. We decided to do a day trip down the Namatjira Drive to Glen Helen instead. We stopped at Standley Chasm, another memory from my childhood. Unfortunately, having started with Karajini NP and Echidna Chasm this trip, Standley Chasm was almost a let down! The kids got to the end and actually said “Is that it?! It doesn’t go any further??” Poor things.

We also stopped at the ochre pits and saw where the local aboriginals get their ochre from. It was (and possibly still is) traded all over Australia! I had been keen to do an artwork with the children, but then we saw this sign. Bummer.

We also stopped at Serpentine Gorge, and wandered along the marked trail to the gorge at the end. Yet again the children were under-impressed and in an effort to spice things up, we took the creek-bed track back to the car. This meant there were no trail markers and at one stage we were all somewhat worried we might have missed a turn somewhere. Fortunately that was not the case and we were very relieved to spot the creek crossing and the car soon after that.

Next stop was Glen Helen, a station and ‘resort’ with accommodation, caravan park and restaurant. We had decided to shout ourselves a meal. We still do ‘takeaway night’ which used to be once a week. Now we have lunches OR dinners. And I think its more like twice a week now.. So we had some enormous burgers in the wonderful air-conditioned comfort of the resort. Dunc and I were still toying with the idea of trying to ‘swing past’ Hermansburg, but when we asked a local, he said “you COULD do it, but it’ll be hours. As a father of 3 children, I say you should go past Ellery Creek Big Hole and take em for a swim instead.” So that’s what we did! The water was FREEZING which made for rather an abrupt change from the thermal pools we were so used to. Lexie got almost all the way in, Angus splashed and paddled and I got knee deep. It was a pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

School of the Air

I had rung when we arrived in Alice, to enquire if any time was better than another. Having been told to avoid 10.30 – 11am, we were incredibly fortunate enough to turn up right during their weekly Art lesson! Woo hooo! It was also the 19^th of September, which is, of course, “International Talk Like a Pirate Day”! We had a fascinating introduction to the school and the way they operate, got to watch a movie which showed how the children take their classes at home, and then got to watch the teacher give her lesson. Complete with Pirate costume, of course! I was intrigued to learn that ALL the children enrolled in the school do the same Art class together – from Prep to Year 6, which makes for a challenging range of ability. It was reassuring to see that Mrs Skoss (Scurvy Skoss today!) teaches in a similar way to myself – she started the lesson by showing the children some artwork that had been sent in by students and discussing parts of their work. Then she showed an example of the artwork they were going to do today – a drawing of a pirate ship. All of this was addressed to camera, and she held up the artworks on her chest to show the children. Then she switched to an overhead camera view to take the children step-by-step through the drawing process. I was interested to see that she drew in a black texta so they could see the lines more clearly – thin greylead just wouldn’t show up on camera as easily.

I was amused (and somewhat relieved) to hear Mrs Skoss say almost word-for-word what I would say to teach her lesson. We got to watch the start and the end of the lesson and had our little tour guide and movie in the middle. This meant we got to see Mrs Skoss use her software at the end to click through to the school rooms of the students so they could hold up the work they had been doing. A number of students had been colouring their pirate ships with paints, so that wasn’t highly successful. LOL. Lots of paint went running down the artworks and we even saw a paint pot get knocked over by an enthusiastic participant. Life as an art teacher… at least Mrs Skoss didn’t have to clean it up herself! She was incredibly quick at noticing who should pick up their work and who should not, and always had a wonderful positive comment for everyone. It was interesting to see the siblings all studying together and even some neighbours had joined up to do their lessons as one. There were 21 students officially logged on, but many more students were there as lots of families were all using the one computer.

It was a great afternoon, and a definite highlight for Lexie and I. Angus was a little too hungry, though I think Dunc was entertained too. I’d thoroughly recommend a stop by for any travelling family – even if you’re NOT a teacher!