Gallivanting Grandma

Wednesday – November 7, 2018

We left Ayers Rock early yesterday morning, flew to Alice Springs, toured Alice during the day, and flew to Darwin last night.  Jeff and I have renamed this land tour.  We’re calling it the “airport tour of Australia.”  Darwin is the largest city in the Northern Territory and the most northern city in Australia.  The city lived up to its reputation for heat and humidity.  This morning it was 85 degrees with 79% humidity.  And it’s only spring!

Darwin is a relatively small modern city with a population of only about 140,000 people. Our group came to Darwin to see the Jumping Crocodiles.  These saltwater reptiles are the largest and most dangerous crocodiles in the world and they inhabit most of the waters in the Northern Territory.  Local advice is: “Swim only in chlorinated tiled pools.”

We drove through a town called Humpty Doo on the edge of the Kakadoo National Park to the Adelaide River.  This is a tidal river and crocodiles live and thrive in the brackish water.  Our group boarded the blue boat pictured above.  Our guides were two young women in their twenties.  Kristy drove the boat and Chelsea rode shotgun and fed the crocs.  Who knew that in the 21st century Crocodile Dundee was a young 20-something woman?!

The boat slowly cruised down the Adelaide River and stopped.  Chelsea hit the surface of the water with her long stick and looked toward shore.  We all followed her gaze to the floating eyes which were coming in our direction.  Chelsea introduced us to an old saltwater crocodile named “Stumpy.”

At first I thought he wasn’t so big, but then I noticed most of his nine-foot long body was under water.  Chelsea held the buffalo bones at the end of her stick above Stumpy’s head.  But, Stumpy swam along the side of the boat looking at us.

Eventually Stumpy jumped up out of the water, showing us his strong jaws and big teeth, and grabbed the bones.  He swallowed them in one gulp.

We said goodbye to Stumpy and moved down the river and Chelsea repeated her stick call.  We saw a smaller light colored crocodile emerge from the shore and swim toward our boat.  This was a young crocodile named “Pearl.”  Chelsea said Pearl was not an albino crocodile but merely had some skin condition which gave her lighter skin.  Unfortunately, this denied Pearl the benefits of camouflage.

Pearl was younger and more agile than Stumpy and jumped high out of the water.  The third and last saltwater crocodile we saw was “Casanova.”  Chelsea said he was about four meters long (12 feet) and about 15 years old.  He was strong and powerful and would be a menace to anything swimming in the river!  He made a loud scary growling grunt when he jumped out of the water to grab the buffalo bones.

On the way back to the boat dock, Chelsea demonstrated the agility of the brown kites.  These are local Australian birds, larger than seagulls; perhaps about the size of hawks.  Chelsea whistled to attract the kites.  Then she threw pieces of meat into the air alongside the boat.  The birds swooped down, caught the meat in their talons, and transferred the meat to their beaks in the air while flying.  What a spectacular show they put on for us!!

Afterwards, we had a delicious fresh fish lunch at a restaurant called Wharf One.  I ate grilled barramundi which is the local farm-raised fish.  The chef gave a cooking lesson on how to cook barramundi.  He made it look easy!  After lunch we walked around the harbor to the building which houses both The Royal Flying Doctor Service Museum and The Museum of the Bombing of Darwin Harbour.

The RFDS is the aerial service which supplies doctors and medical needs to remote areas in the Outback of the Northern Territory.  It was founded in 1931 and is still active today providing emergency medical services to people in far remote areas of Australia.  The airplane below is one of the Flying Doctor’s planes from the 1950s which was set up like an ambulance.

The Bombing of Darwin Harbor was a revelation to me.  I have to admit that I never heard of it.  The city of Darwin was attacked by the Japanese in February 1942 to prevent the Allied Forces from using it as a base during World War II.  It was an surprise aerial attack on Australia and was a great shock to the country.  More bombs were dropped on Darwin than were dropped on Pearl Harbor and there were 236 casualties.  I don’t have any good pictures from the exhibit but my photo of a gathering offshore storm reminded me of the attack photos.

Jeff and I had a free evening and we found a Chinese restaurant near our hotel and ate “chow mein.”  Not the “chow mein” from our youthful days.  The next morning our group left for the Darwin Airport to fly to the Pacific Ocean city of Cairns.

Tuesday- November 6, 2018

One of the most popular activities at Sails in the Desert Resort is to wake up at dawn and watch the sun rise on Uluru aka Ayres Rock.  As the sunlight falls on the red sandstone of the monolith, Uluru changes colors.  Our group rallied out into the cool dark desert at 5:00AM to watch the sun awaken the vibrant colors of “the Rock.”

The bus drove us out to “the Sunrise Viewing Area” in the dark.  Along with other large groups of tourists, we watched and waited and waited.  Cricket chirps were joined by early bird calls.

We waited and watched the sky become lighter.  In my opinion, Uluru was more spectacular last night.  The light on the red sand monolith had been an amazing sight.  This morning, high clouds rolled in and put a haze around Uluru.  We all took pictures but by 6:30 we left the viewing area to have a buffet breakfast at the Sails in the Desert Hotel.

Immediately afterwards, we were driven to the Ayres Rock Resort Airport to fly to Darwin, with a six-hour stop-over in Alice Springs.  Fortunately for us, the tour company made arrangements so we could visit “Alice” and see some sights and not spend the day at the tiny Airport.  The map below highlights the location of Alice Springs.

Alice Springs is a remote town located north of Uluru, in the Northern Territory.  The small town of 28,000 people became famous in 1950 after a book called “A Town Like Alice” was published.  It was written by Nevil Shute and the novel was made into a movie and later it became a television mini-series.

I was pleased and excited to visit “Alice” because I remember the mini-series on television and especially the handsome actor Brian Brown.  The tour group’s first stop was The Alice Springs School of the Air which broadcasts educational lessons to 125 elementary children who live in very remote areas in the Northern Territory.  Radios were originally used to send lessons to children.  Today, educational information is transferred via the internet and video recordings.

Our next stop was the Alice Springs Reptile Center where we learned that Australia has the most dangerous animals, venomous snakes, and poisonous spiders in the world.  Many of these live in the desert surrounding Alice.  A sweet young woman introduced us to several docile snakes and lizards.  The dangerous ones were in tanks in another room.

Later, we had a pleasant lunch in a restaurant that looked like the set of an American “Wild West” movie.  I think it represented the wilderness of the Australian Outback which surrounds Alice Springs.  There are thousands of miles of bushland:

The day heated up to about 90 degrees in the sun with a high level of humidity, but our tour guide, Juliet, wanted us to see the Overland Telegraph Station.  The first telegraph messages from overseas were relayed through this station which connected Darwin to Adelaide in 1872.  It linked Australia to an undersea cable that came ashore in Port Darwin to Indonesia.  This made communication between Australia and the rest of the world possible.

Our final stop was to the top of ANZAC Hill to see the memorial dedicated to those who served in World War I.  It was a great location with 360 degree views of Alice Springs.  As an added bonus, someone spotted a snake under a bush.  The bus driver identified it as a western brown snake, one of the ten most venomous snakes in Australia (and the world?) which we had seen in a tank at the Reptile Center.

Fortunately, this was our last stop in Alice.  We all boarded the bus and were driven to the airport for our flight north to Darwin.  It had been an interesting day visiting “The Outback.”

Monday – November 5, 2018

We spent one full day at sea on the Majestic Princess to cruise from Melbourne to Sydney.  This morning we awoke to the alarm at 4:30 this morning and watched the ship come into Sydney Harbor in the early morning light.  It was a spectacular entrance!  Then we had to muster in the Vista Lounge at 6:00 o’clock so we could take a tour bus to the Sydney airport to begin a land tour of Australia.  I took a picture of the sign below in the airport because I thought it was perfect:

We met our Australian tour guide, Juliete, and twenty-seven other intrepid American travelers.  Together we boarded a Jet Star flight to take us from Sydney to the middle of Australia, to a place called Ayres Rock.  The rock is a sacred place to the local aboriginal people who call it Uluru.  It was a bumpy three hour flight but we finally arrived in “the outback.”

This was truly the red desert center of Australia.  When someone in the group called it ‘the middle of nowhere,’ he was corrected by our bus driver who said, “we were in the middle of everywhere!”  It was 36 degrees Celsius and one of the most barren places on earth.  The only facility for hundreds of miles is the Red Rock Resort which has several levels of accommodations and is located just outside Uluru National Park. We all checked in and were taken into the park to see “The Rock.”

Ayres Rock is a huge ancient red sand monolith sitting alone in the vast Australian outback.  Formed millions of years ago, it currently is over one thousand feet high and six miles around the base. Our bus driver served as a local guide and provided information about the geology, flora, fauna, history, myths, and people of the region.  Uluru is a UNESCO World Heritage & Cultural Site and is protected by the Australian government.  We drove up close to see a variety of features.

We saw ancient “cave art” drawings and several other natural features of Uluru.  The guide led us to one section where we were allowed to touch the rock. I could understand why Uluru is sacred to the local Aboriginal people.  We also walked to a pool of water which forms during rare rainfalls.

Later we went to the Cultural Center and met Alice and Sarah who are members of the local Aboriginal community.  They work at the center to educate tourists about their culture and outback lifestyle.  Both women were very shy and soft-spoken and they communicated with us through an Australian parks ranger.

Afterwards, we drove to the “Sunset Viewing Area” to watch the colors change on Uluru as the sun disappeared behind the Australian Outback.

Tables had been set up for us with cold drinks and cheese snacks so we could nibble while watching the colors on the rock. The viewing area was crowded with tourists and there was a party atmosphere as the shadows lengthened and Uluru became darker and more purple.

It was an amazing sight and an unforgettable experience.  I have wanted to visit Australia and specifically see Uluru (aka Ayres Rock) ever since I first learned about it in the mid-1970s.  It was so exciting to be so close to The Rock. Who else would travel 10,643 miles to see a rock?!