Wayoutback–Day Two–The Journey Continues

Our second day in the outback we were to wake up, drive to chase the sunrise down and kill it, kill it good, then go to Kata Tjutta (the Olgas in English) and have a bit of a hike around. Then we would drive to our campsite on a cattle station, far from where any tourists go.

Our guide seemed to have failed to realize that we were all in fact tourists, so getting away from tourists would be a neat trick. He made this comment a fair amount–where no tourists go, we’ll get away from other tourists, i hope that tourists aren’t there, etc etc etc. Because I think I’m funny, I kept trying to make jokes about there being no tourists around, etc etc. No one else thought this was as amusing as I did. They may have been taking him seriously.

We woke up at half-past I need some more sleep to go see the sunrise. I’d made a bet with Hazel the night before about this little adventure. We’d all seen the sunset over Uluru and I’d made a comment about how, considering how early we were getting up, the sunRISE had best be VASTLY different from the sunSET or else I may become a bit irate. She was quite convinced it would not be incredibly different at all. Somehow, the bet ended up being that if the sunRISE was not vastly different, I would owe her an ice cream, but if it were vastly different she would owe me one. I’m not sure how I came to be on the side that was the exact opposite of what I thought would happen. Tricky Brits.

We all folded up our non-tourist swag and lumbered into the tank. We’d have breakfast after viewing the sunrise, to be sure not to miss it. According to our guide, we were going somewhere that tourists never go to but we had to race to get there. So as we’re driving, there appears to be a mass exodus of coaches and buses out of the park, in the general direction that we are headed. I’m imagining a scene extremely close to if not exactly like what we found the night before and am trying to decide what kind of ice cream to buy Hazel when we pull off onto a different road from where other vehicles are heading.  Driving up a ways, we pull off into a car park and pile out. Jason gives us a little information and points out a wooden pathway at the top of which we can see the sun rise over Uluru in the distance looking one direction and over the top of Kata Tjutta in the distance in another direction.  While we’re looking at the timeless beauty of nature unfold, he’ll rustle up breakfast. As that breakfast includes actual brewed coffee, I’m pretty excited.

We troop up to the top of the pathway where a platform is and wait. The sky had already started to thin and lighten and shift from dark to light gray. It wasn’t rays of sun, but subtle shifting in colors of the sky over the rocks that turned from darker patches of black to deep red to their faded clay color.

Kata Tjutta

Sunrise over Uluru

It was beautiful.

More than the lovely sunrise though, I’ll remember all of the people (other tourists had clearly stalked us and hunted us down as they had recognized our superiority in finding these out of the way places that were marked with little more than a sign that read “Lookout Point”) standing there, waiting for the sun to rise so that they could capture it in their cameras. No one really saying anything, everyone just waiting.

Sunrise hunters

I got bored with all of this relatively soon (some people were up there forever. Yes, sunrises are pretty. Do you not have them in your country? Come on, coffee’s waiting!) and walked down to the car park to take some photos of the trees and get something to eat.

Image from the car park

Jason had laid out quite the spread of bread products, juice, cereal, milk, spreads and jams, and coffee. I almost passed out with excitement when I saw actual peanut butter (okay, so it was Kraft peanut butter with tons of added sugar and whatnot, but still!), so I grabbed some raisin bread and spread it thickly with peanut butter and jam as Jason and Michaela (who’d also realized that the sun rises in her home country as well) looked on with something akin to disgust. From the ensuing conversation, I gathered that to them it was like I’d grabbed some lard mixed with sugar and equal and slathered it on my bread. And while I agreed that this particular type wasn’t very healthy, I argued that if you get organic peanut butter without all the added crap, it is quite good.

Michaela, who was trying out my delicious breakfast treat and agreed it tasted quite nice, looked at me in disbelieving horror and said, in Europe, we say there is nothing healthy about peanut butter.

Oh, in that case.

After our breakfast, we packed up all the crap and headed out to hike Kata Tjutta. Jason was going to do the first part with us then turn back and we could either turn back with him or continue the hike to complete the circuit. I looked at the map of the hikes and saw that the first part was considered easy and the second part challenging, so I decided that I was going to be lazy and turn around.

We start walking and as we’re going, have to climb up a few slick rocks and try to maintain purchase with our (ok, my) nearly tractionless shoes. During one of our breaks on the way up (and as we’re going up I’m thinking, and this is the easy route? What do Australians consider moderate???), a fair group becomes involved in a photo session.

Enjoying the fresh clear water

freedom in the river

We continue heading up and stopping occasionally to hear about history of the area, nature, etc and then come to the viewpoint where our guide will leave us. At this point, we can either continue or head back with him. It would appear that my map reading skills are still in fine form as it turns out I’ve read the map completely backwards and we’ve actually been walking on the challenging part the entire time and are now being given the option to continue on the easy part of the trail, or to head back over the challenging part. I and everyone else decide to continue on the easy loop.

After completing the hike and piling into the car, we head to the cultural center at Uluru. It was small but interesting and had displays on traditional foods (with stuffed versions of things as well!) and then a few stores where  you could buy goods. There was a rug that had been designed by an artist (I then found this design mass-produced on tea towels and bracelets among other things in shops in Sydney) then the design was sent to Kashmir to be created by an artist there, then it was shipped back to Uluru to be sold for approximately a kajillion dollars. It was very beautiful and I contemplated it for a few minutes before realizing that there was really no way I could get this massive rug on the bus without leaving someone behind. So I left the rug behind.

We head out to the tank to get settled in for our long drive out to the cattle station. By this time, everyone has settled into their chosen seats. The Swiss girls are content to sit next to each other, the German dyad are joined at the head, hip, and heart and so it is physically impossible to separate them. One might die while the stronger survives and always feels a shadow around their heart. The Brazilian girls are sitting in the last seat and so this is where the Belgian has planted himself as well.

I’m still floating a bit between seats and seat partners and so end up sitting next to the French guy for a few legs of the trip in different seating configurations. I’d not really talked to him before (the trip, even though three days, because of how it was broken up, seemed much longer than it really was. Or rather, it seemed like we’d all been together for much longer than we had been) and so was able to talk to him a fair bit about music, school in France, etc. My favorite conversation was the one about stereotypes that were typically held about each other’s country, then about other countries. I found him hilarious. And I have to say, on this trip of many cultures and many of these people being the sole representatives for their country in my little universe, the French came out on top, with the Germans a close second. This could set me up for failure, however, as I have decided to go to France partially because I’m now convinced the entire country will be full of funny charming people who like, or at least don’t mind, Americans and can speak English. This may not be accurate. So to do my part, I’m going to learn French before I go. However, if even after I learn French the representation is still not accurate because they are not universally charming, I’m going to be annoyed.

On the way to the cattle station, we stopped to pick up firewood and witchety grubs. Witchety grubs are a traditional food of the aborigines and Jason told us that they taste kind of like egg. So you have to dig down under this certain tree that I can’t remember and look for a bulging part of the root. Then you bust that part and in the hollow of the bulge is a delicious witchety grub. They can be eaten raw or cooked. Jason was going to cook some for us but warned us that if any of them ‘broke’, we’d have to eat it raw because it wouldn’t stay good.

We handled those things as though they were made of thin glass.

Witchety grubs

After harvesting the witchety grubs and wood, we finally made it to camp. There was a bush shower there so after the chopping and preparing for dinner was finished, the majority of the ladies trooped off into the outback to bathe. Five women took showers in less than twenty minutes. It was awe-inspiring. We came back to food that was all done, including some bread crafted from random ingredients. Jason cooked up the grubs and I ate a piece. Unfortunately, when I tried to pop one in my mouth, previously unseen stringy bits kept a few sections together and I wasn’t entirely sad when the extra section fell to the earth. One piece of grub I can do, but multiple? It wasn’t that tasty. (Similar to egg, but nothing to get excited about)

Keely had bought a cake for her dad’s birthday so we lit candles and sang to him as well. Then everyone was drinking and chatting and Sheila had an idea for a game. She put a bit of cake, a bit of witchety grub, and a bit of bread under three different glasses. Then Clive the birthday guy had to select someone to pick a glass and eat whatever was under there. If they didn’t want to eat it, Sheila was going to make them do something. The first person got the cake. The second person, Camilla one of the Brazilian girls, got the bread. But she had convinced herself it was a section of grub and so refused to eat it, even with everyone shouting that it was the bread. So then Sheila made her kiss Clive. Lastly Julian got the grub and ate it up.

I had bought some marshmallows for toasting because I am an American and that is what we do when faced with a campfire. Unfortunately, Australia does stupid things to marshmallows and only sold them in packets of mixed flavor. The least noxious ones I could find was a bag where about half were pink raspberry flavored and the other half white vanilla flavored. And they were extremely small. So as we’re all sitting around the fire, I pick up a few sticks for toasting the marshmallows and get them ready, whittling them down to sharp points then burning the points in the fire. I can’t imagine what the Europeans were thinking. Here I’d eaten the death food of the fat Americans (peanut butter) for breakfast and now I was whittling wood like a troglodyte out of Deliverance in order to toast puffy chemically sugar over a fire.

Michaela wanted to learn how to do it and against my gentle advice, decided to toast a raspberry marshmallow. Oddly enough, she found it foul and then refused to try another vanilla one, which was much nicer. The Swiss girls toasted a few and Hazel as well. The Belgian did but his face twisted into a grimace as he ate it. The Germans were off from the campsite doing German things and the French guy politely said ‘non’.

Jason had in the morning intimated that we were going to play games. Games like spin the bottle and ‘I never’. Thankfully, everyone was too tired and too grown to play. So we laid out our swags and sleeping bags in a circle around the fire and drifted off to sleep with a million stars crowding out the sky over our heads.

Tags: Australia, Outback, witchety grubs