Yesterday I left off while we were drinking champagne and watching the Rock put on its colours.
The next day we got up at five, had breakfast and drove off to Kata Tjuta (The Olgas in Old Speak). They're about 50 km west of Uluru, a group of domes separated by magnificent gorges. They cover an area of about 21 square km and are composed of a coarse grained conglomerate of granite, gneiss and other volcanic rock.
The first European to see Kata Tjuta was Ernest Giles, in 1872. He named the domes after the King and Queen of Spain at that time: Amadeus and Olga. The Aboriginal name means "many heads" or "four heads" (not quite sure which is right. Perhaps "four" and "many" are synonyms in Pitjantjatjara.) The highest point is Mount Olga, which rises approximately 546 m above the surrounding plain, 203 m higher than Uluru.
We walked to the Valley of Winds, and it was bloody windy, all right. Cold; Chris offered a spare jacket, which was snapped up. It was hard walking: nooks, crannies, climbing little bit and then stepping down, which is much harder. Knees have held up marvelously so far. I still have the two and haven't had to use the brace yet. That night we stayed at King's Creek Cattle Station and had a traditional camp oven drovers' dinner.
Kings Creek Cattle and Camel Station was set up by Ian and Lyn Conway less than 30 years ago from nothing.
They threw together scrap metal to start a home and rounded up wild camels to start a business. They ran safari tours on camelback into the desert. Ian's mother was an Arunta woman, and his father a Kidman boss drover.
He grew up on Angus Downs station and was raised by his traditional Aboriginal grandmother. He learned to catch, ride and eat camel there. After a successful tender for crown land, Ian and Lyn Conway built their home, the sheds, garages, and a shop out of scrap.
Now they have a thriving tourism business. They set up a charity which sends the some of the local Aboriginal children to boarding school in Adelaide. You might have seen Ian Conway on "Australian Story".
Some of our campers walked down to the shop area to check out Ian
Conway's show before dinner that night. It got dark and the rest of us had scoffed down our camp oven dinner, but they still weren't back. There was talk of going out to look for them, but Chris, I guess mindful of losing any more campers, suggested we wait a bit.
They eventually returned, having spotted a lone torch in the blackness. It was held by the teacher of a camping school group. He offered the lost members of our camp a guided walk back to the campsite in exchange for some dishwashing liquid.
That night I was the official photographer and took the group portrait, as most of the Europeans were leaving the next day. Sad really: they were all young and energetic. There were four honeymoon couples: two from Italy, one from Sweden and one from France. The next day they would go and leave behind only two young ones, Andrew and Kav. There were four couples left: three Australians and one Dutch. Willy, the Dutch woman spoke not a word of English, but chatted to us all happily in Dutch. Suzette from Melbourne works for AMES, and apologized for sending us Chris Corbel and then Michael Cox. Michael Cox was known for his failure to greet his colleagues and his graphs in Melbourne,too. Heartening to know that it isn't just us at ACL he despises.
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