Thursday, 2/12, Bus to Yulara (Uluru-Ayres Rock)

Cricket: Match going on in Alice Springs for indigenous teams. This is their ticket out! They learn so much participating in the sport, as in any sport for young people. The teams were saying in our hotel.

Basically the game is like baseball with 11 on each side, a batter (with a flat bat rather than rounded) who is in front defending their wicket - 3 posts. Batter can be out by catching his hit before it hits the ground. The pitcher throws a fast spinning ball and batter just tries to deflect it as far away as he can. I didn’t hear anything about running bases. Matches can last for 5 days but nowadays they have a shorter 1 day version of the game.

We left at 8 a.m. for our 6 hr. ride to Yulara which is the town nearest Uluru, or Ayres Rock, the big red rock, held sacred by the Aborigine. We will do a sunset visit tonight and then if you want a sunrise visit at 5:15 a.m. before we head to the airport to fly to Cairns, near the Great Barrier Reef on the coast, and meet up with the other 20 or so members of this tour. This was a 5 day pre-trip.

Our first stop was at the Stuarts Well Camel Farm where some people did a 10 minute $7 camel ride. I took photos for people as had done this in Tangier and Egypt. A neat gift shop had a tea towel with an Australia map on it and another with an aborigine pattern on it. I also bought for $3.50 a little package of dried Bull Shit (I know JUST whom that is for!!).

We watched a movie on the bus about the controversial Intervention program started here in the outback about 8 years ago. Because of complaints about alcoholism and sexual and physical abuse, especially of children, the government started this program, top down, and lumping every community together, rather than dealing with each one and its problems as needed. They didn’t allow alcohol to be purchased and brought in to communities. It sounds like people were paid let’s say $500 a month stipend. But now they would get maybe only 1/2 of it and the rest would be like gift cards that could only be spent on food, clothes, etc. Sort of a big brother controlling everything. It’s still a very controversial program.

Mt. Ebenezer was the lunch stop where the highlight was a baby kangaroo whose mom had been killed and the girls at the stop were caring for it. So a lot of people contributed to the “milk fund”. Had a lovely conversation with Trish, a former stage actor/singer/dancer from the 60s to the 80s on the London stage (she toured as Eliza in My Fair Lady!!) and Josh, who was also in theatre in the US, playing even now the oboe and English horn at Radio City Music Hall, formerly also with American Ballet and American Symphony, in New York. Neither one ever married or had kids and they met a few years ago on match.com - talk about a match!!!! They were delightful and we had an interesting talk about religion!!

 

 

On we went to a photo stop with our first sighting of Uluru from the distance and some people climbed the HOT red sand to view also the salt lake. I had on my flip-flops and it was immediately burning my feet so Richard took my camera up to get some shots for me.

Ate breakfast with Richard who is from Michigan just across the Lake from Chicago, around past Michigan City, IN, where Bud and I lived for a couple of years. Actually he had lived in LaPorte where the lake that we would water ski on near MC. He was a pastor there and his wife is in business and they raised 4 kids. One of his sons is meeting us at Cairns. He and his wife will soon celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary! Interesting!


Staying at Ayres Rock Resort in Yulara.