Tie Me Kangaroo Down

Friday
Where did Valentine’s Day go? On February 13 we boarded the United flight to LA at about 6pm after a one hour delay for the 5+ hour flight. Then after a short wait in LA and a14+ hour flight we arrived in Sydney on Friday morning, February 15. Since we crossed over the International Dateline we totally missed Valentine’s Day. Not to worry. My Valentine came prepared; no wonder I keep him.

I love Sydney. What’s not to love? Mild summer (now), mild winter (last time I was here), beautiful buildings (old colonial and new like the Sydney Opera House), shops (lots of bookstores), people on the street, the Harbor, familiar food, palm trees, and throw in a Briti-ish ambiance just to make it perfect. And as much as I love Sydney maybe the rest is best: kookaburas, koalas, kangaroos, wombats, duck-billed platypusses, and pink cockatoos.

Saturday
Today we went to Ayers Rock, three hours by air from Sydney. Ayers Rock, now called by its aboriginal name Uluru, is smack in the middle of Australia. We are now half a time zone from Sydney. Yes, we turned our clocks back 1 1/2 hours! There is nothing here but the Ayers Rock Resort and “the Rock.” The Resort actually even owns the airport. There are a number of different hotels which make up the Resort and a shopping center consisting of a few tourist shops, a cafe, and a pretty pitiful supermarket. As far as I can tell, there is no town nearby -Alice Springs, for example, is a five hour car ride away. This is the Outback.

Our dollar is weaker than ever, the exchange rate being US$1 equal to about Aus$1 but everything here costs double what it would be in the US.

Sunday
The Wildlife: I was thrilled to see the dingo sign in the airport but alas no dingoes have been spotted yet. Flies are such a nuisance here that all the other tourists are wearing “fly-nets” over their heads. The flies seem to especially like the heat and sun of the day; it’s well over 100F dry heat at its peak and just impossible to walk anywhere without the flies swarming your face. There are supposedly emus, kangaroo, and pink cockatoos here but we haven’t seen any. We did see some pretty crested pigeons and some feral camels walking around but I personally think it’s too hot for anything but the flies.

The tourists are all Australians and Japanese. The main attraction seems to be looking at Ayers Rock at sunrise and sunset. There is a path (rather steep) with a guide-rail but tourists are semi-discouraged from pursuing the climb by posted heatstroke and other danger warning signs and more ominously, warnings from the Aborigine people (the “Traditional Owners”) that they would rather tourists not climb Uluru and if you do bad luck may come your way. Not that there was any chance that I would anyway.

So we went at sunset. And again at sunrise. I thought it was lunchtime but it was only 8:15 AM. This is a long day.