Bushwacking toward Uluru

Mon 17th
Another early start, up at 6am, we were met by our bush guide - Steve at 7am and loaded into his 4WD with trailer to head out into the bush. First stop about an hour out of Alice, all but 10 mins on sand roads with locusts jumping at us from all directions, was at Craig's place. Craig has managed (after an 8 year fight during the 80's) to get the title to the aboriginal lands of his forefathers. You can imagine the hoops he had to jump through to establish some sort of ownership to the land after years of being forced to live elsewhere in a township. However, he took us up into the hills and sat us down under a tree and told us the creation story using drawings in the sand - just like he has done in the past to his own children and grandchildren (however their versions are more detailed).
We learnt about the snake like creatures (but they have skin, hair, fur and scales and feathers) that wandered the universe until they found the waters of earth to live in and go to sleep. Then mother sun (I can't remember their name for it but the sun is definately female and things to do with light pertain to the woman, e.g. lighting the fire is the privalege of the oldest woman in the family and daytime is woman time; whereas night, and the moon, is the domain of the men).
When the sun shone down this awoke the snake creatures who crashed down to the bottom of the water and stirred up the earth at the bottom which rose up to become the land; and then these snakes crawled across the land forming mountains and gulleys; in the land forming the underground aquafers and where they entered or left they formed water holes. One of the creatures was so full of water that after his hard work he stopped and huffed into the air with his watery breath forming the clouds that then floated along the ridge of the mountains running east west and caused first thunder, then hail storms and rain. Another snake rose in the south and wiggled its way north until it hit the mountains where it dived down into the earth (forming another water hole) and emerged on the other side where the water that emerged formed a rainbow. After them the animals moved in, the emu, the bat and the kangaroo.
The people that first came to this area arrived at the first water hole dumb, when the first man drank he started to speak and as each man in turn took more water they all began to speak but each in a slightly different dialect. The eight of them split and moved to the different areas of the land and started the families there. Craig's family are the rainbow people, during ceremonies they paint their bodies with rainbows and tell that part of the story, then there are the thunder people (with bolt of lighting body paint), hail stone people (with blobs of paint), snake people (with wiggle paint - obviously), then emu (3 toed emu footprint), kangaroo (Kangaroo L shaped footprint) and bat (wings open). Craig is now custodian of the land for the rainbow people.
It was all quite confusing when he was telling us some parts because he would talk about his grandparents or his brothers or his cousins; there seemed to be hundreds of them; but these are just words to describe other memebers of his tribe, the elders, the people in his own clan (rainbow) and those in the other clans. Once I had got that sorted it all seemed to make more sense.
He also explained how we and they view the world in completely different ways, we see the land and say how great the colours or the shapes are, but they see the history (the story as they say) and feel the connection to the land and the signs of what is happening; or that is what I think he meant anyway.
He showed us some medicinal plants, a place where paintings have been made on the rocks, hand prints and symbols of food collection and the passing of the snake creatures. Finally as we walked back to the vehicle he showed us some places where the snake creatures had emerged from the ground and scraped against the rocks leaving the marking of their skin on the rocks, and the marks are quite extraordinary and, as yet, unexplained by science!
When we returned to the homestead Steve had rustled up a potato hot pot with hot damper cooked on the open fire and we sat around chatting about the differences and similarities between different cultures. Craig is quite a fair skinned aboriginal, he is descended from a white who didn't stick around. It was very hard for the women who gave birth to white babies as first they had to explain to their own family and then they had to hide the children when the welfare people came round as it was the policy (in the 60's and 70's) to remove half caste children and place them with white families regardless of the wishes, stability or health and wellbeing of the child in its own family. In the same day Craig has had confrontations with a white fella (as they call them here) calling him black, and a black fella calling him white!
By around 2pm we were on the road again for about a 200km drive to King's creek. This again was along mainly dirt tracks with a few hairy bits where it was very sandy and the car slid and wriggled, then there were sudden dips in the road where the recent rains had cut through. We had a puncture and we all pitched in to get the tyre changed, we stopped to collect fire wood and Steve got hit in the eye by a twangy branch (all on his own, none of us inflicted it upon him!) and we stopped several times to take photos of the amazing scenery and the birds we saw along the road.
We arrived at our campsite as the sun went down, the clouds went bright red and we were treated to spectacular views. A barbecue supper by the camp fire was wolfed down by all and then a hot shower (wood burning heated water). The toilet is an open door affair so that you can sit and contemplate the night sky which is so amazingly clear without the pollution of light from nearby towns. The temperature has really dropped and Tris, Celso and Steve have hit the Swags (true Aussie bed rolls as in 'Once a jolly Swagman camped by a Billabong') whilst I sit here and type by firelight before I forget even more of the day's events than I have already.

Tues
Our first night in the swags was great, I was roastie toastie with my Thomas the Tank Engine Pillow and Bob the builder duvet. Tris had clouds and daisies as his theme and Celso was spiderman! I had woken several times in the night and watched the milky way slowly revolve. The southern cross marks the part of the milky way which has a dark patch in it, (we had already heard how the Inca used to look at the dark patches rather than the patterns made by the stars), here the dark patch shows an emu - it's uncanny!
Steve had cooked a fry-up on the fire before we had fully emerged from our swags. The billy was boiling and it was all very civilized! We packed up and started the drive towards King's Canyon about half an hour away. The trailer on the back was acting funny - it was a posh kind with its own breaking system and this had somehow got locked on; so, after a short while when we stopped, we could hear the wheels clicking and squeeling; the bearings were not happy. This meant that Steve couldn't come on the walk with us around King's Canyon rim. We left the trailer on the edge of the road (dirt track) and Steve dropped us off, explained what not to miss on the walk and then he returned to sort out the trailer.
The walk was 6km of just amazing scenery. Red sandstone mountains just jut out of the desert and have been weathered into the most amazing domes and steps and a canyon with sheer cliffs. The colours were fabulous, the track wound its way through the formations with sudden appearances of greenery and an occassional pool of water left over from the rains last week. The Garden of Eden is in a particularly shaded spot where all the rain that falls on the rocks collects; it has abundant plant, tree and bird life, including a fern like plant, the west Macdonnell Cycad, that has no living relative within 800km in any direction. We saw skinks (smooth lizards) and a funny little spikey lizard (that we can't find in the Australian reptile book that Celso carries religiously around) that was so well camouflaged (speckled red) that I didn't see him until I had almost trodden on him. Take a look at the photos.
When we returned Steve had managed to fix the brakes and we set off back to King's Creek cattle station for a lunch of camel burgers (delicious by the way) before setting off on a track that runs for 110km down towards Uluru and only used by the farmers of the 2 adjacent cattle stations and Way Out Back Tours, so we were guaranteed not to meet anybody from the general public - and infact we didn't see anyone at all. This was real 4 wheel drive country with the track at some places completely washed out by the rains, trees fallen across the roads and an abundance of things to see.
We passed camels roaming in the bush, red kangaroos that bounded off as we approached; big red males and smaller grey females, one with a joey in her pouch. There were dingo tracks in the sand, Procession Caterpillar nests in the trees, budgies nesting in a low hole just near our chosen camping spot, pink cockatoos flying overhead and finding a place to roost not too far from the spot we chose to camp, so Celso hunted them down and shot them! (with the camera of course). The day finished with an incredible sunset, a campfire meal of steak followed by marshmallow damper mixed up and gooed by Tristan and rescued by Steve! Then we snuggled down in our swags for another roastie toastie night next to the fire, under the incredible stars and the emu in the milky way.

Wed
Incredible sunrise setting the sky pink was our wake up call. Not far into our drive further south we stopped to look at some incredible plants and also found a falcon sitting in a tree and being very cool and calm as we snuck closer and closer to take photos. At one point we left the track to chase a herd of camels. We got between a large male and his harem and he ran, flopping his lower lip and foaming as he tried to reach his ladies. As they got away from us into the trees he regurgetated his cud stomach (thing, or something like that, a big pink intestiny looking thing) - apparently this is a self defense mechanism to put off predators!
We also passed through a graveyard of camels, it must have been the site of a cull since there were so many skeletons in one place. (There are more camels in the Northern Territory than people and they have no natural predators so are turning into quite a pest as they strip all the trees.)
More of Wed in the next installment!