All things...

Kata Tjuta

Ultimately, I have found that the only explorer worth talking about is, personal experience. We all experience the world differently, whether we are Australian, French, German, Klingon, British, Canadian, or Adam. The great thing about exploration and discovery is that we all are looking for different things in similar experiences. Some are looking for external discovery, or internal understanding, or even pictures for Facebook (and I have lots of pictures.) The outback is a strange and wondrous place. It is certainly not somewhere I would wish to live, (as most people who do live there go at least partially crazy from isolation,) but it is also a place I don't mind visiting. My journey was hardly as arduous as the journeys of Sturt, Stuart, or Burke and Wills but it was met with its fair share of small triumphs and tragedies. Whether it was the annoyance of the flies or falling asleep watching the stars, whether it was sacrificing my favorite pair of shorts or dancing the night away at some far flung bar with my international friends I have found my own sense of the outback. I cannot measure it in samples of flora and fauna or routes mapped to water or even in the miles I traveled, but it is an experience that will stay with me.

We spent our final days exploring Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon. There was a lot of hiking and even a fair bit of climbing, but the views of the landscape only improved with each meter above sea-level that we traveled. We plunged into the oasis that was the Garden of Eden in the middle of Kings Canyon and some of our party literally plunged into the garden's freezing waterhole while the rest of us sat around eating chips and granola bars. Much like Uluru we found a place of beauty that was sacred to the native population and taking one look at the majestic red rock cliffs and expansive views it was not hard to understand why.

Kings Canyon

Our last night was spent under the stars at Kings Creek Cattle Station which was haunted... sort of. Aboriginal people are apparently terrified by the place and usually refuse to step foot anywhere near the land where the cattle station is located. It is said to be inhabited by the evil shaman spirit Waiwera. Small tornado-like occurrences happen in the outback when warm air mingles with cold breezes to create a circular wind effect. It is the same basic concept as regular tornadoes and it is an occurrence you can see almost anywhere, such as when a leaf is picked up by cross winds and blown in circles. Aboriginal people believe that such a phenomenon is Waiwera. They say that is how he travels and much like the Tasmanian Devil or Red Tornado he travels from one place to another appearing as a small cyclone of air. As usual, I did not know this when we stayed At Kings Creek Cattle Station, and as usual Steve, our guide, slept in the bus. That night I stayed up late playing drinking games with my French, German, and Swiss friends, which meant I basically had to go to the bathroom every two hours. So round about two o'clock in the morning I was walking back from the bathroom and I had a strange sense of being watched. (admittedly it could have been because there were teeming multitudes of mice running around and moving in the tall grass, but I think it might have been more.) Even weirder the wind seemed to kick up behind me as I walked, almost like it was following me. I suppose the mind plays tricks on you when you are half asleep and dragging your butt back to a warm sleeping bag on a cold windy night.

However, Steve told us of an occurrence that has happened a few times to some of the people in his former groups. The most impressive was of a Dutch woman who was traveling with her daughter. She was actually had a doctorate of biology and was a smoker. That night she walked away from the fire to smoke a cigarette and look at the stars alone. A few moments later she let out a blood curdling scream that alerted the rest of the group to come running. When they got to her she was shaking from head to toe and felt queasy and weak-kneed. Apparently, she described the sensation that something was holding her down, pressing on her shoulders. She felt like she couldn't move. So they listened sympathetically and guided her back to camp to sit by the fire. Her daughter sat next to her and put her arm around her scared mother. Suddenly, the wind kicked up out of no where and a small swirling breeze moved into camp, dampened the fire and picked up some of the ash from the fire and threw it on top of mother and daughter before moving off. Supposedly, this type of phenomenon and behavior was witnessed on several occasions by different people. I never saw anything this conclusive, but it does make you think. Maybe the aboriginal people are not wrong for staying away from the place.

Either way, we put the place behind us and headed to Alice Springs, the most remote and smallest of Australia's major cities, but I will leave that for another post.