by Lorna Hendry
We walked behind him, humbled and slightly ashamed. Someone braver than us asked about climbing Uluru. The ranger explained that for the local Anangu people, the climb was a path of spiritual significance. It was only done by Aboriginal men for special ceremonies. The Anangu would prefer tourists didn’t climb, for several reasons, but mostly because so many people had been hurt or died. Then he paused, and added something I had never heard before.
‘You know, the Anangu people, they have a huge respect for tradition and culture. And when all these white people started coming out here and climbing the rock, they saw it was really important for you lot. They think, “Those whitefellas, it’s strong in their culture that they climb.” They would prefer you don’t do it, but they aren’t going to say, “No, you are not allowed.” It’s not their way.’
I felt a twinge of shame about climbing a decade ago. Back then I had been determined to prove to James that I could do it. It had been a decision based on pride and vanity and at the top, surrounded by exultant white people, some of whom were pissing on that sacred rock, I had already felt the sting of regret.
The ranger finished his talk with a few words about snakes. Snakes mostly avoided people, he said. Anyone who was bitten by a snake was either very unlucky or very stupid. The vast majority of snake bites were on the hand, from people bending down to get a close-up with their camera.
We left the group behind to walk the 10-kilometre track around the base of Uluru. By now it was mid-morning and it was already hot and dry. When we emerged from the shadow of the rock, the only respite from the heat came from the intermittent stands of skinny trees. We huddled in tiny patches of shade to drink warm cordial and eat stale biscuits before dashing out into the sun again.
Towards the end of the walk, the boys had stopped running ahead to explore the path and we were all trudging along silently in single file. Our feet crunched on the gravel path and my heartbeat pounded in my ears. It was a sign I recognised as an early warning of dehydration and mild heat exhaustion.
‘Snake!’ shouted Dylan.
Everyone froze.
James’s foot stopped in mid-air and hovered over a two-metre king brown that was sliding across the path towards the sandstone slope of Uluru.
Shaken, we took a break on a large rock between the car park and the base of the climb and watched people slip on the smooth rock face as they clambered on their hands and knees up to where the chain link fence started. As we ate the last of our biscuits, I wished I was sitting there with a clear conscience instead of this lingering feeling of guilt. I decided to spare the kids from having the same experience as adults.
‘You know what?’ I said. ‘I’ve changed my mind. You boys can’t climb.’
James agreed. ‘It’s too hot and too dangerous. I don’t want to go with you and you can’t go on your own. When you’re eighteen, you can come back and decide for yourselves, but right now we’re saying no.’
Oscar made a few noises about it not being fair but I could tell they were both relieved that the decision had been taken out of their hands.
It was now after midday and the temperature was in the mid-thirties. Drops of sweat slid out from under my hat and trickled down my sunscreen-slick cheeks, leaving trails of pale freckled skin in the film of red dirt that covered me. A young woman started up the slope, dragging two small children along behind her. She was wearing a flimsy dress and lightweight sandals. Her foot slipped and as she crashed down on one knee, pulling one of the small children down too, we saw that she also had a baby in a sling strapped to her chest.
‘That lady’s an idiot’, said Oscar. No-one disagreed.
At the visitor centre the boys bought postcards that declared ‘I respected the wishes of the Anangu and did not climb Uluru’ and pointed out loudly that James and I couldn’t say the same.
Back at the campground, rehydrating with icy poles and a swim in the cold resort pool, the boys worked out it was Easter Saturday. I distracted them from obsessing about chocolate by talking to them about the meaning of Easter, trying to be even-handed about other people’s religious beliefs.
James was less diplomatic. ‘It’s all just bullshit stories.’
Dylan looked up at us, balancing the need to respect his father’s views with a desire to eat his body weight in chocolate the next day.
‘So God and Jesus are just made up’, he said carefully, ‘but the Easter Bunny and Santa exist. Right?’
The next day, when the Easter Bunny dropped far too many chocolate eggs in the red dirt and the sugar levels rose in the campground, I decided to take advantage of the wireless internet in the five-star hotel lobby and update our website. As I lingered with an icy cold soda water and watched the progress bar on the web loader fail to move, the airport shuttle bus deposited a family arriving for their three days and two nights stay. Tidy blond children wearing freshly ironed white T-shirts, crisp shorts and spanking new sandals stood patiently in the lobby as their parents booked sunset viewings and dinners under the stars. I felt scruffy and slightly smelly and the internet had slowed to a crawl so I packed up the laptop and wandered back to the tent. A water pipe had burst and Oscar and Dylan were stripped to their underpants, racing sticks in the river of churning red mud. I couldn’t remember ever seeing them so dirty or so happy. I plonked down on the ground and watched them play, wondering how they had adjusted so easily into their new life. In less than six weeks they had gone from having an entire cupboard full of games and toys to messing around happily in the mud with sticks.
Before we left home a lot of my anxiety was about how much stuff we needed to take. What clothes did we need to pack? Two pairs of shorts each, plus jeans and trackie daks and maybe pyjamas. A minimum of three t-shirts, two long-sleeved tops and two warm jumpers. Raincoats. Lots of underwear and socks in case it was hard to do washing. What kind of shoes should we take? Would runners, walking boots and thongs do? What about games? Toys? Books? A few DVDs to watch on the laptop on cold or rainy days that we had to spend inside the tent? Should we have a couple of footballs and a soccer ball and a tube of tennis balls? If tennis balls, then racquets? Bicycles for everyone or just for the boys? Would they need helmets? How many pots would I need to cook our meals? Could we get by with only two forks each? Did we need cereal bowls and soup bowls and spare bowls ‘just in case’? Would towels for showering and towels for swimming be enough? Four tea towels, or six?
Despite what I had thought of as a radical cull of our belongings, I knew now that we had brought far too much. At least one box in the trailer was full of stuff we didn’t need. More importantly, I couldn’t think of one thing we had left at home that we were missing. Certainly not the cupboard full of toys.
Later that afternoon we drove out to another viewing point and jostled for a good position to watch the sun set over Uluru.
‘What’s meant to happen?’ asked Dylan. By now he had seen lots of excellent sunsets, but so far this was the first one that involved travelling 10 kilometres in a traffic jam to a car park.
‘If yer lucky, the Rock’ll go off’, said a man standing next to him in the crush.
The Rock failed to go off that night, stubbornly fading from shades of red to grey to black with no spectacular moments of purple in between. The crowd around us declared the sunset a fizzer and stomped off disappointedly to their cars.
The walk around the rim of Kings Canyon in the Watarrka National Park, 320 kilometres from Uluru and an optional detour for many travellers to the Red Centre, was only 6 kilometres long but the park brochure included a warning about the extremely difficult climb to the top of the canyon. One of our guidebooks called it Heart Attack Hill.
The day before, we had woken the boys up when it was still dark and driven to the viewing platform halfway between Uluru and Kata Tjuta to join another throng for the sunrise. We gave up trying to squeeze onto the platform for fear of knocking over one of the carefully placed tripods. All the cameras were aimed at the silhouette of Uluru that was em
erging from the darkness as dawn broke. We sat behind the crowd, set up a small gas ring to make coffee and toast and, with our backs to Uluru, watched the red mounds of Kata Tjuta light up as the morning sun’s rays bathed them in a warm glow. As the other tourists packed up their equipment and got back on the buses we heard a man ask, ‘Is that the Olgas?’ Like Uluru, this area has been officially returned to its Aboriginal name. And, just like Ayers Rock, many people still only know it by its European name.
Later that morning we dragged the boys along the Valley of the Winds walk at Kata Tjuta – an 8-kilometre trudge over loose rocks and up steep inclines. At one point the path veered away in a large loop away from the rock formations and out onto the hot, exposed landscape. The view back to the golden-red stone mounds was incredible but, with nowhere to shelter from the sun and the heat from the rocky ground radiating through the soles of our shoes, it was too hard to stay out there long enough to take it all in. It had reminded me far too much of the Flinders Ranges.
This time we decided to be sensible and just walk along the base of Kings Canyon. Dylan wasn’t keen on doing another long walk, and James and I had to keep reminding ourselves that he was only six. It was a short stroll along the creek bed in the shade of the canyon walls. While we looked at the map on the sign where the tracks diverged, a couple with two little boys bounced down the track from the rim walk.
‘How was it?’ asked James.
‘No problem’, the man said. ‘It’s not that hard once you get up there. It only took us about two hours.’
James and I shared a look. ‘I’ll just go and grab some more water’, I said.
In the end we spent four hours in the canyon. After the initial climb of 1000 steps, which the boys bounded up, the track circled the canyon’s rim and gave us uninterrupted views to the horizon. We took a detour down a long, steep and rickety flight of wooden steps to the permanent waterholes aptly named the Garden of Eden. It was cool in the shadow of the rock walls around us and when I dipped my hand in the water to test it, it was colder than I had expected. We dangled our feet in the clear water and watched tiny fish dart in and out of the shade of giant palms and tree ferns. Insects flitted across the water, moving so quickly that I couldn’t be sure if they were dragonflies or giant mosquitoes. The voices of the hikers on the rim far above floated down to us on the breeze. They sounded slightly flustered from where we were sitting. In this tiny unexpected oasis, the few people around us seemed to have fallen into a stupor. Swimmers drifted gently from one side of the pool to another, occasionally pushing themselves along with a lazy kick that didn’t even break the surface of the water. A young couple sat surrounded by the contents of their packs, balancing books on their knees. One man was asleep, curled up on the rock with his head resting on a rolled-up towel.
I felt sorry for the people above, stuck up there in the heat of the day, unable or unwilling to take the time to climb down the steps and relax by the water. We ate our sandwiches and then decided that not having bathers wasn’t a good enough reason not to swim and spent over an hour floating around the pool in our underwear. Refreshed and slightly damp, the walk back up the staircase was easy.
Our campsite was at a cattle station just outside the national park. We’d chosen it because it had a fire pit, but signs asked campers not to collect wood from the camping area, instead giving directions to a spot in the scrub just off the road. James and Oscar drove out to get the makings of a bonfire.
A few kilometres along the road they turned down a sandy track into the scrub. Twenty metres along, there was a small mound of sand that was less than a metre high. It was no great obstacle. The car powered over it and they drove on until they found a dead desert oak conveniently close to the track. They took turns to cut it up with the axe until it was in pieces that were small enough to load onto the roof of the car. Realising that he had forgotten to bring a spare rope, James balanced the wood in an intricate pattern beside the spare tent, the bag of wet weather clothes, the fishing rods and the golf clubs that were stored up there.
They got back in the car. James drove slowly and carefully so as not to upset the delicately balanced load. At the small hill, he inched the front of the heavy vehicle up and over the mound. The extra load pushed the back of the car down into the soft sand of the track. With no traction from behind, the front wheels lost their grip and sank into the sand on the other side of the lump. The belly of the car sat on top, like an elephant suspended in a sling. No amount of cajoling, reversing, changing gears or swearing could make the car move.
James had moved the compressor, snatch strap, tyre repair kit and jack into the car, but the shovel was still in the trailer. He found a shovel-shaped piece of firewood on the roof.
‘Come on, Oscar. Let’s dig.’
Twenty minutes later, he realised that the further they dug into the compressed sand the more likely it was that the car would squash them like bugs as it settled into the space they were creating underneath it.
They walked out to the road to flag down a passing car. After waiting for fifteen minutes, James decided to go back and try to build a platform of logs under the back wheels. He left Oscar under a tree on the side of the road. Ten minutes later, two young German men stopped for the little blond boy sitting alone in the middle of nowhere. When he explained why he was there, they drove down the track to help with the rescue. James hooked the two cars together with his snatch strap and they were free in thirty seconds. The Germans were rewarded with a six-pack of warm beer that James had in the car.
Back at camp, Dylan and I had only just started to wonder what was taking them so long.
James had vowed never to drive the same road twice if we had a choice. Instead of retracing our route back to the Stuart Highway to get to Alice Springs, we decided to take the Mereenie Loop. An unsealed track, it ran north from Watarrka National Park, past Hermannsburg, and met up with the sealed road to Alice on the edge of the West MacDonnell Ranges. It passed through Aboriginal land, so we needed to get a permit from the Kings Canyon Lodge.
In the hotel lobby, the receptionist gave me a Mereenie Tour Pass booklet and a form to fill out and asked for $2.20. ‘I’ve had to train myself to say “Two dollars and twenty cents”’, she told me. ‘I used to say “Two twenty”. People were having heart attacks because they thought I meant two hundred and twenty dollars.’
The Mereenie Loop travelled through the country of Albert Namatjira. When I was a kid, I had seen prints of his watercolours hanging on the floral papered wall of 1970s lounge rooms. By the time I had finished university, I had absorbed enough cultural theory to understand that Namatjira’s work was an example of Indigenous artists being persuaded to see their landscape through European eyes and paint it accordingly. In his work, the vibrant and stark landscapes of the Central Desert had reportedly been softened and rendered in pale shades of mauve and blue to appeal to white art critics and buyers. As we came over a rise in the road, the country below us sang in pastel hues of purple, yellow and green. The sky faded to white on the horizon and the light was hazy and diffused. The white trunks of huge ghost gums glowed as if they were lit from the inside. It looked exactly like an Albert Namatjira painting.
We camped at Palm Valley that night. Its crevasses and gorges were lush with palms and cycads, relics of central Australia’s tropical past. Recent rain had created small pools in the hollows of the rocks and tadpoles darted in and out of the sun. We shared our fire with some Distance Education inspectors. They were on holiday, but their regular job involved travelling to remote cattle stations and communities and checking up on kids who were enrolled in School of the Air. They talked about families they had met who hired young women to work as governesses, often teaching a whole family of children at different year levels, from early primary onwards. Most only lasted a year, they said. The isolation got to them. The ones most likely to leave early were girls from cities down south, and then the mothers had to take over all the teaching as well as cooking for the sta
tion hands and working on the property.
For once we kept quiet about the length of our trip. I secretly hoped that they would assume we were just on a quick trip to the Red Centre. I didn’t want to encourage any questions that would reveal our own dismal attempts at homeschooling. I was particularly ashamed as I thought about our most recent attempt at school in the open air shelters beside Uluru, which had ended with me declaring that if the boys wrote three postcards each I would count it as a full day’s schoolwork. I wouldn’t have lasted more than a few weeks as a governess when I was in my early twenties. Or even now.
We were ignoring all the sections of the workbooks that involved art, sport or major projects. Art, we reasoned, would be covered as the opportunity arose. We had already visited the small town of Hermannsburg, which was established as an Aboriginal mission in 1877 by German Lutherans. Hermannsburg has always been known for its artists. Albert Namatjira was the best known of Hermannsburg’s painters and now the ceramics made by the women of Hermannsburg Potters are displayed in galleries around the world. We had walked through the historic buildings, looked at the paintings and pots, and lingered over old photographs showing Aboriginal children gathered outside whitewashed churches.
Reading was more contentious. When we left home, some of our friends had raised their eyebrows when they found out that we weren’t planning to buy the boys any electronic games or DVD players to use in the car. ‘They can read’, I had said.
And they did. The back of the car was littered with filthy, torn books. They often picked one up off the floor, opened it to a random page and started reading from there. Although I hated seeing books treated so carelessly, Oscar and Dylan really did love them. They just didn’t read the way most people did: from the beginning to the end, one book a time.