JULY 20 - 22 PREVIOUS | NEXT | HOME | CONTENTS | ABOUT | SEND EMAIL Nutella Sunrise, Native Knowledge, Climb Scene Monday, July 20; Yulara Sunrise in the desert. Another 5:30am start, crawling out from under my warm sleeping bag and a now-dishevelled mantle of borrowed airline blankets into the near-freezing darkness. After much drowsy fumbling and lurching to the toilet block and back, 36 shadowy figures loaded shivering onto the bus and drove with misted windows towards the rock, somewhere out there in the pre-dawn blackness. I must have dozed off, because suddenly we were right upon it. It was enormous. It loomed out of a lightening sky and I could not see the top of it, even though I pressed my cheek against the window beside me and angled my head as back as far as I could. It was huge. As part of my continuing efforts to further international linguistics and communications, I introduced Hanneka, the Dutch girl, to the word "gi-bloody-normous." On the eastern side of Uluru, we came upon the sunrise viewing area. We were not the only ones up at this hour, not by a long way. Numerous other buses, cars and four-wheel drives were parked all around, their occupants spilling out onto the roadway clutching cameras and bracing themselves against the cold morning air. Steve parked and coordinated a breakfast on tables set up in front of the bus. Caution: Speed Bump Uluru sharpened against the sky as the sun's glow reached up from below the horizon. I devoured slices of bread hidden under thick layers of Nutella, occasionally pausing to stare at the mother of all rocks and take a photograph. All around me, cameras clicked remorselessly. The monolith's colour ascended from near-black to a deep orange glow that grew richer as the sun rose. It seemed to radiate warmth through colour, but my extremities were still freezing. It was awe-inspiring. We were so close that it filled the skyline. Shadows and features on the surface of Uluru developed into the forms of animals, faces, trees, cartoon characters, everything imaginable, until the sun rose further and banished them until the following dawn. Uluru, with Kaja Tjuta visible in the distance. Almost as soon as the sun had cleared the horizon, tour operators began to hail their patrons and bus drivers started their engines. As I tucked into even more Nutella, buses and cars departed and the tourists around me thinned out until our group was almost alone by the roadside. Uluru still radiated a glow no less spectacular than before. It had been the same the previous evening, other tour groups rushing in after us and leaving before us as if Uluru was a minor rest stop en route to some other main attraction. I later learned that most of the tourists at Uluru were on "whirlwind" tours of the three major attractions of central Australia - Uluru, Kaja Tjuta, and King's Canyon. These tours operate from Alice Springs and attempt to visit all three places as part of a 40 hour, 1400 kilometre marathon. In summer, the searing heat prevents tourists from enjoying anything outdoors after the relatively cool dawn hours have passed, yet thousands sweat and stumble their way around Kaja Tjuta and King's Canyon during the hottest hours of the day because of a relentless itinerary. People die every year from heatstroke and dehydration as a consequence of this. I was grateful to be on a relaxed pace midwinter trip. The wisdom of Wayward Bus Company's slogan "Let the others rush!" was beyond question. By the time we had finished breakfast and packed up, we could see the tiny silhouettes of the first eager tourists surging up the side of Uluru like a parade of ants. We bused over to the base of the climb where I had the unfortunate experience of using the "long drop" pit toilets. The smell was horrendous. I probably would have keeled over only for the fact that I would have fallen into the pit, and there was no was I was going to let that happen. I deliberately avoided inhaling through my nose at all, and I think that this may have saved me. Granted, the toilets were in the middle of nowhere, but their awful condition was in stark contrast to the manicured facilities at Yulara. I later learned that this difference in standards was marked by the National Park boundary; Yulara is owned by a multinational company, whereas the facilities at Uluru itself are owned and managed by a National Park/Aboriginal Trust whose complicated funding details I failed to grasp. Steve led us along the Mala trail which hugged the giant monolith's base, pointing out caves, overhangs, sacred sites and other symbolic features in the rock and explaining their significance to the Aboriginal people. We meandered into the shadows of Uluru, and I shivered with cold as I listened to accounts of spiritual beliefs, cave paintings and ancient customs. I was surprised by the amount of healthy green vegetation and the number of trees near the base of the rock. They survive on the rainwater which streams off the stained sides of Uluru and collect in small pools around its base. Uluru: The World's Largest Animal Cracker. We gathered under a large overhang and sat in a rough circle as Steve enlightened us a little on Aboriginal history and customs. He told us about "Tjukurpa," an Aboriginal code of belief that explains the origins of all living things, the origins of the landscape, and the laws that give meaning and order to life. We learned about songlines, which are stories told to adolescent Aboriginal males that are based around the features of the land. Once an Aborigine knows these songlines, he has the knowledge necessary to travel, for contained within the stories is information indicating where to find food, water and shelter while on a journey. The songlines provide freedom to the maturing Aboriginal men. Remembering them is considered gravely important, as survival can depend on it, and to reinforce their importance, after being told the songlines, the inductees are painfully circumcised. If a man forgets a songline, he is punished - Steve told us of one Aboriginal who was speared through the thigh leaving him permanently crippled as an example to others. Another part of Aboriginal culture I found interesting was that large, fat women are considered more attractive than their slim counterparts, as obese women are believed to be more fertile. This is just one example of how the tenets of Aboriginal culture are built around survival. I thought of waif-like supermodels, glossy beauty magazines and the western obsession with being thin and tried to imagine what it would be like if the Aboriginal conception of feminine beauty took hold across the world. Steve also tried to educate us regarding the unfortunate Aborigines who are most visible to tourists - the down and outs and the drunks who can been seen hanging around the settlements of outback Australia. He cautioned us against forming such a stereotype of Aboriginal people, explaining that the vast majority of Aboriginal people keep to themselves, living happy and culturally rich lives among their tribes far from the beaten paths of tourists. The Aborigines we saw in towns were unfortunate victims, he said, of European attempts to "civilise" them - they were taken from their tribes as children and brought up in a western culture. With the subsequent recognition of Aboriginal rights and culture, these members of the "stolen generation" were told to return to their tribes. But they could not rejoin their tribes, as they had no knowledge of their heritage or culture - they were outcasts among their own people, and unwanted in European society. Stuck in the middle with no sense of identity or purpose, many became down and outs, turning to alcohol to escape their problems. Temporary escape is especially tempting for many Aboriginals since their physiology reacts to alcohol in an such extreme manner that only a few cans of beer can make an Aborigine drunk for two days. From what I remember, the Aboriginal people believe that Uluru is a goddess who, at the beginning of time was being chased across the land by Kaja Tjuta, and who, for some reason stopped, stuck her head in the ground, and fell asleep. When tourists climb on sacred Uluru's back, the Aboriginal Anangu tribe who are guardians of the monolith disapprovingly warn that it tickles her, and some day all of the tickling will cause her to wake up, get hopping mad, and cause the end of the world. As traditional owners, they also feel responsible for the deaths on Uluru caused by heat, falls and overexertion. However, under a delicately balanced agreement struck between the Anangu and the tourist industry, people are allowed to climb the monolith. There are notices at its base, and sections in interpretative brochures discouraging visitors from climbing through use of the message "Nganana Tatintja Wiya" - We Never Climb. After learning all of this, I climbed it anyway. Why? Insensitive, selfish, disrespectful, arrogant, rude, and inconsiderate are all words that spring to mind. Of course its easy to have perfect vision in hindsight - at the time, the reasons for climbing included exhilaration, challenge, beauty, discovery, achievement, appreciation, contentment, and the pathetic but compelling "everybody else is doing it, so why can't I?" Actually, not everybody else was doing it. After Steve's solemn talk, only a handful of others from our group of 36 climbed the monolith (most chose to walk 9km around the base), but the ascent trail was sufficiently busy with other tourists to partially relive me of the guilt that I felt. Consider this: a National Park Service-funded survey completed in 1991, when approximately 250,000 people visited the Uluru-Kaja Tjuta National Park, reported that 71% of them cited climbing Uluru as one of their primary reasons for visiting, whereas only 35% were primarily interested in learning about Aboriginal culture. Towards the end of the decade, annual visitor numbers had increased to 360,000 and developing cultural sensitivities had probably closed the gap between the percentages cited, but cannot be disputed that a significant portion of the large revenues generated by the park can be attributed to Uluru climbers. A share of this revenue goes to the Aboriginal community, so it can be argued that the Aboriginals are benefiting from allowing visitors to climb the rock. Visitor numbers and subsequently the local economy would certainly take a hit if the trail up Uluru was closed. In the weeks and months before coming to Uluru, I had never considered not climbing, and had only been vaguely aware of the Aboriginal request to remain at the base (tour companies and brochures make little attempt to publicise the request not to climb for fear of losing bookings). All of that time I had been eagerly looking forward to the challenge of the notoriously steep ascent, and feeling of elation at the summit. I had travelled so far, and was too close to not go through with it. I tried to convince myself that if the Aboriginals really wanted to close the climb, they could, but that they chose not to because of the commercial benefit to themselves. Deep down I knew it wasn't that simple, but the argument suited my desire to climb so I left it at that. I set off up the incline alone, camera over my shoulder and water bottle in hand. It was not yet 9am and still cool, but before long I was breathing heavily. The slope was very steep and quite smooth and I found myself using my hands as well as my feet at times, and staying close to the heavy safety chain that ran down the steepest part of the gradient. No visible guilt: Dave climbing Uluru. When I climbed, I did so at a quick and steady pace but paused to rest on several occasions, noting the vehicles in the carpark diminish in size and surveying the surrounding desert as it spread out below me. Near the top of the monolith, the incline lessened considerably and I hiked across towards the highest point near the centre, crossing many dips, humps, gullies, and ridges on the way. Presently I reached the summit, 345 metres above the surrounding landscape. It was marked by a circular bronze plaque and a tired-looking but proud bunch of tourists taking photographs to document their achievements. I was awestruck by the view, but found that the noisy other tourists were detracting from the experience, so I hiked on past the summit marker a little way and after crossing a couple of ridges, found myself alone, out of sight and earshot of anyone. The view was spectacular. I could see forever. Near the summit of Uluru. The near cloudless blue sky faded into a haze where it met the red landscape at the horizon. The nest of domes that comprised Kaja Tjuta lay basking in the desert sunshine to the west, and Mount Connor was a hazy mesa far off to the east. Apart from a thin grey thread marking a quiet road, I could see no other evidence of humankind. I revelled in the illusion that I was completely alone, the only person for hundreds of miles, and I bathed in the feelings of solitude, discovery and achievement that washed over me. I felt so small, but yet so significant. It was as if the universe spread out below me was all mine, and mine alone. I was the king of the castle, the ultimate castle. I sat down on the red rock and indulged in the silent magnificence. Time passed. Together, the warm sun and cool breeze made a perfect combination which tempted me to lie down and stay all day. I was in no doubt that I had made the right decision in choosing to climb. There was nowhere in the world I would rather have been. On top of the bottom of the world. I couldn't stay forever. After about a half-hour I got up, took some photographs, and made my way back towards the marked path. I was in no hurry to go down, and meandered across many ridges scarring the roof of the rock until I reached the top of the descent. Some of the unfit-looking people that passed me on their way up were panting so hard and looking so overexerted that I wondered if they weren't regretting their decision to attempt the climb. Signs at the base of the ascent warn people against climbing Uluru if they are out of shape. These warning signs are reinforced by a sobering panel of plaques affixed to the rock nearby which commemorate those who have died on Uluru. Some of the plaques mention the cause of death, whether it was a heart-attack, a fatal fall or something else, but others just announce a name and a date. I later found out that a few of these plaques are unhappy records of suicides. The practice of posting plaques has ceased in recent years, because authorities feared that potential suicide candidates would travel to Uluru just so their death would be commemorated in that way. View looking south from near the top of Uluru. During the steep descent, I had to concentrate hard in order to avoid falling. I was glad to have the safety chain to hold on to, and my complaining knees, ankles and calves were equally glad when I finally reached the bottom. I rejoined the others and we visited the nearby Aboriginal Cultural Centre before having lunch and returning to Yulara. I napped during the afternoon, and woke just in time to eat dinner - more barbecued kangaroo, and enough onions to keep our group farting all the way to Alice Springs. We rounded off the evening playing cards and drinking around the campfire. By this stage, our group had noticeably separated itself into cliques, who tended to eat together, hike together, or who sat near each other on the bus. It was interesting to see how different people and different groups formed friendships over the course of our trip, and I wondered how the developing social circles of individuals within our group compared with their social circles at home. There were times when I felt like our trip was some sort of bizarre sociology experiment. Wayward mates. Denise and I comprised part of a circle that sat near the front of the bus and included Louise and Justin, an English couple, Hanneka, a vivacious girl from Holland, and Jane, a candid English girl. On the long drives, boredom had induced many unusual and even crude discussions amongst us, usually accompanied by much hilarity. One running topic consisted of teaching Hanneka the English vocabulary for the most obscene and disgusting things we could think of. She, in turn, would reciprocate with the Dutch equivalents. Suffice it to say, that if I am ever in Holland, I will never be short of words in a doctor's office trying to describe a sexual infection or dysfunction. Predawn Pancakes, Distinguished Domes, Corporate Choirboys Tuesday, July 21; Yulara - King's Canyon For the third day in a row, we rose before the sun. Like the previous day, we dragged ourselves onto the bus, shivering in the cold and scarcely awake. I curled up for the half-hour drive to Kaja Tjuta. The jelly bean girls. Several people had brought their sleeping bags to keep warm, and were wearing them upside down with their heads poking out of unzippered openings near the bottom. They looked like a platoon of giant jelly beans. We neared Kaja Tjuta as dawn approached, and pulled into the viewing area. Like an army of ants (infiltrated by several rogue jelly beans), we carried our breakfast and the things we need to make it up a long ramp to a covered metal balcony that looked out at the western profile of now distant Uluru, and at the eastern side of Kaja Tjuta. Uluru before sunrise. From far away, the cluster of sandstone domes had seemed to merge together into a drunken hill, but now that we were closer, the individual mounds were quite distinct. Kaja Tjuta may once have been a single monolith ten times the size of Uluru, but weathering has eroded away the rock to form a concentration of 36 domes of various sizes, the largest of which is 546 metres high. Kaja Tjuta means "many heads" in the dialect of the local Anangu, whose members regard the area as especially sacred, even more so than Uluru. Indeed, the eastern portion of Kaja Tjuta, upon which we were watching the sun rise, is closed off to visitors completely. The sun's first rays spread across Kaja Tjuta's eastern domes. Apart from a handful of German tourists, we had the viewing area to ourselves. Making the most of this, we set up tables, unpacked boxes, delved into coolers, boiled kettles and set up a hot plate to cook pancakes on. Steve and Scott were our head chefs, and as the sun's first rays hit the faces of Kaja Tjuta, I was tucking into a large pancake smeared with honey. Getting the honey onto the pancake had been more difficult than I had expected, for although it was in a plastic bottle advertising itself as squeezable, the cold of the early morning had thickened the honey into a stubborn gel, and it took all of my strength to force a lonely sweet trickle out of the bottle. I tried Nutella on my second pancake, but it was even more difficult to coax from its jar, so for my third pancake I retreated to the familiar territory of strawberry jam. We kept eating after the other tourists had whisked themselves away, and not even the arrival of the chefs at the bottom of the pancake mix bowl stalled our breakfast. Tea and coffee heated our bodies and woke our minds. We packed up and continued on around to the western side of Kaja Tjuta, where almost everybody hiked the 7km loop trail through the Valley of the Winds. The valley was incredibly beautiful. The Valley of the Winds. The red domes rose high and steep around us, enclosing an environment very different from the surrounding desert. The floor of the valley fostered crystal clear pools and streams, while the cool shade of the domes provided a haven for many trees and plants making the most of winter's cooler temperatures and plentiful water. The Valley of the Winds is so called because of the strong breezes that sweep through the area enclosed by the domes. The winds, which are strongest during summertime, are generated by the replacement by cold air of the warm air which radiates and ascends from the sun-heated domes. As the morning wore on, I grew hot walking on the exposed eastern portion of the trail, and began to understand how people often dehydrate, sometimes fatally, while making this 3 hour hike in the intense heat of summer. The death of two Japanese girls in this way the previous summer was a grave example of a frustratingly avoidable tragedy. It reinforced to me that the motives of the Aboriginal people in dissuading visitors from exploring Uluru and Kaja Tjuta are not entirely based on their sacred beliefs, but are partly for the safety and comfort of the visitors themselves. We returned to Yulara, ate lunch, and packed up. The running joke for the day peaked with the exclamation Jane and Justin cleaned into the side of our dusty bus, which claimed "a dingo stole my baby!" They were referring to Meryl Streep's feature film portrayal of Lindy Chamberlain, who, in 1980, claimed that her 10-week old daughter Azaria had been abducted by a dingo from their campsite near Uluru. Over the last few days in Yulara, we had started to blame the dingos for stealing anything and everything that we could not immediately put a hand on. Claims like "a dingo stole my toothbrush!" and "a dingo stole my torch!" developed in magnitude and seriousness to accusations by some that "a dingo stole my tent!" and even "a dingo stole our bus!" A judge would have been hard pressed to assemble an impartial jury from our bus for any dingo criminal trials around Yulara. Steve invited us to "kick back, relax, and enjoy the ride" to King's Canyon as we pulled out of the campsite. We were becoming so familiar with this refrain by then that the entire bus chorused together to complete it with him. Steve grinned. His family was truly coming together. Pity there was only one day left. A tent to call home. Our last night was to be spent in Watarrka National Park, next to King's Canyon, which we planned to explore the following day. While we set up our tents and built a fire, Steve and Scott cooked huge potfuls of Chili Con Carne. I balked at the sight of pounds of kidney beans being added to the mixture, but the result was delicious. They had spared no effort for the final night's dinner, even illuminating our buffet table with candles wedged into empty beer bottles. Eating and drinking by the campfire, we watched as a large number of young boys sauntered back and forth to the washrooms in their pyjamas under direction of responsible-looking guardians before disappearing into a marquee tent next to our site. My guess that they were boyscouts was wrong - we heard that they were in fact choirboys who had been brought to the area to sing in King's Canyon for a Quantas commercial. It looked like they were getting corporate treatment anyway; I spotted bunk beds and caterers in their tent as I swigged my beer. My tattered and paper-thin bedroll seemed pathetic in comparison, but after I began to drift off to sleep in front of the scorching fire and retired to my tent, I slept so soundly it could have been a feather mattress. Superlative Sunrise, Chili Con Canyon, Bojangles Bob Wednesday, July 22; King's Canyon - Alice Springs After a sleep-in until 6am, I plodded to the washrooms to discover the place plagued with innocent little choirboys. Except they weren't so innocent at 6 in the morning when they were grumpily lined up waiting to take their turn in the shower. My delicate early-morning disposition was subjected to yells, taunts, pushing, whining and cataclysmic banging of shower doors. Joining even the shortest shower queue meant that I would have to endure the capers of the three half-pint nightmares already waiting for what I was certain would be an eternity, so I opted to remain unwashed. I brushed my teeth extra thoroughly as penance. The sun rose over the silhouette of the distant canyon as we ate breakfast. It was one of the most spectacular sunrises I have ever seen. It must be admitted that I have slept through most of the sunrises in my life so that statement isn't as profound as it first appears, but even if I had watched the sun come up every morning since I was born, I am confident that this sunrise would have been in the top three. The pure gold of the sky pouring out from behind the canyon deepened into saturated reds and pinks as I looked higher into the sky. Sunrise over King's Canyon. Thick clouds huddled together to create a dense quilt onto which the colours fell, their undersides melting the yellows and their folds concentrating the reds. Fingers of cloud stretched out towards me from the impenetrable ceiling over the canyon, scattering and thinning to reveal their shadowed interiors and the impossibly blue sky above. I was willing to forego the rest of my breakfast to watch the breathtaking spectacle unfold, but within moments the sun rose, the glowing clouds faded back into anonymity, and the sky gave up its vivid colour, brightening nonchalantly as if nothing had happened at all. I decided never to sleep through a sunrise again. We began the final day of our trip by hiking around the canyon. Eroded from a crack in the rock over millions of years, King's Canyon now plummets over 100 metres from the top of the canyon wall to the floor. The walls have been undercut near the base, and a stream flows year-round in a protected environment known as the Garden of Eden. King's Canyon. Many rare flora grow between the sheltering rock, and the lack of fish in the isolated water has led to the evolution of a numerous and diverse insect population. I was glad to find that there were few insects about when we trekked through the canyon, and I congratulated myself again for visiting central Australia in the middle of winter. We took a three-hour circuitous route up to the rim of the canyon through some imaginatively shaped geology. Denise and I walked with Hanneka, Justin, Louise, Rebecca, Jane and Chev. Having been continuously in each other's close company over the last seven days, there was little pretension remaining between us, and the Chili Con Carne farts provoked by the exertion of the hike were exhibited proudly, even by the girls. Thank God we weren't cooped up in the bus. The trail was quite busy in both directions, which spoiled the serenity a little, although Jane and Chev didn't help by trying to have a conversation with us from across a ravine. After crossing a bridge at the western end of the trail, we descended into the Garden of Eden. The rare and unquestionably interesting flora were described on information panels at regular intervals, but the details of life-cycles, environmental adaptations and photosynthetic ratios was lost on our company of ignorant infidels, who tended to skim the panels and confidently conclude with a statement like: "Hey, that IS a funny-looking tree." Wary of the potential fire hazard the digested Chili Con Carne presented in the confined canyon, we ascended without delay to the layered rock formations on its southern side. A steep descent through a maze of domes known as the Lost City led us back to the beginning of the loop trail, where we waited until Steve returned with the bus. We packed up our tents at Watarrka after lunch, and started on the last leg of our Wayward journey to Alice Springs. Rest stop on the Ernest Giles Highway. The trip took us onto the unsealed Ernest Giles Highway, a bumpy and dusty washboard road that we followed for 100 kilometres. The constant jarring was too much for the bus's stereo, whose musical output became thicker and thicker until it degenerated into an unrecognisable mumble. Steve and Scott's best efforts during a bush toilet stop didn't fix the stereo, but a workaround using a walkman and the bus's public address circuit promised to keep us going until we reached Alice, albeit in a rather tinny and crackling manner. It was late afternoon by the time we rumbled off the Ernest Giles highway onto the smooth asphalt of the Stuart Highway. The sudden transition onto the sealed road was startling, as I had become accustomed to the constant bumping and rattling on the dirt road and it had faded into the background of my consciousness. We seemed to glide along the Stuart Highway, and only the electric hum of the tyres on the roadway betrayed the fact that we were touching the ground at all. We pulled in for a rest stop at Jim's Place, a small roadhouse and self-proclaimed wildlife sanctuary just off the highway. Jim, obviously a bit of a softie, must not have been satisfied with owning a general store/ restaurant/ souvenir shop/ pub, and started recovering injured animals from the road and nursing them back to health in a fenced enclosure in his yard. There were several kangaroos inside the enclosure, one of which had a tiny joey in its pouch. There were ducks and rabbits and wallabies too, and a large serious-looking bird sitting in a tree overlooking the melee outside the fence, where several of our group jostled for a photo-taking position closest to the adorable young kangaroo and its mother. No doubt a veteran of many snap-happy tourists, the mother kangaroo bounced off to the far side of the pen when she saw there was no food forthcoming. Group photo setup. The cameras were not put away though. Our Wayward trip was almost over, so we needed a group photograph. Everybody wanted a photograph with their own camera, and everybody wanted everybody, including themselves, to be in it. This can be a drawn out and haphazard process with half a dozen people, but with thirty-six of us, it would have been a serious ordeal. Luckily Steve had encountered this problem before, and had a solution. One of the ever-useful fold-up tables was taken out of the depths of the bus, and set up on the roadhouse forecourt. Steve commanded all of us to dump our cameras onto the table, and to get into formation along the side of the bus. Once that was accomplished, he and Scott raced their way through all of the cameras on the table, starting at the edge and moving towards the centre, taking one photograph with each. Cheese! They fiddled with lens covers, played with zoom lenses, and searched for shutter releases. Everything from big super-expensive automatic-everything cameras to disposable cardboard point and shoots rubbed shoulders on that table. Except mine. Not having a whole lot of confidence in their photographic skills, I had my camera take the picture using a timer. Just to be different. Just to be sure. We reboarded the bus for the final leg of our journey to Alice Springs and arrived as it was getting dark. Steve took us on a quick tour of the town so that we could get oriented. We passed along the Todd river, or rather, the Todd river basin, as the river dries up for most of the year. Alice Springs hosts the Henley boat race on the Todd every year. The race is fashioned after the famous Oxford-Cambridge boat race of the same name. The only differences are that in Alice Springs there aren't any bottoms in the boats, and (luckily enough for the crew) there isn't any water in the river. The competitors run along the river basin with their legs sticking out through the bottoms of their boats, Flintstones-style. The race is a major event in the Alice Springs calendar, so it was a major disappointment to the town when one rainy year, the race had to be cancelled because there was water flowing in the river! We checked into our respective accommodations (most of us chose the economy option and stayed in Melanka's rather grungy hostel) and after regrouping our thoughts, clothes and appetites, headed to Bojangles pub down the street for our final group dinner, and the first meal we had to pay for on the spot in over a week. We were entertained as we ate by Bob Barford and his outback Aussie band. Bob was a white-bearded, weatherbeaten-looking fellow, resplendent in a check shirt and a wide-brimmed hat. His outback Aussie band didn't look any more urban. Bob and the boys were the focus of our fun for the evening, and they did a fine job at keeping us happy. Well used to foreign tourists, Bob had a repertoire that included a song from almost every country represented in our group. Before beginning a song, he would call up the natives of the country where the song originated and have them sing along, or play one of the spare musical instruments he had lying around. He had a tambourine and a set of what he called "music sticks" that looked suspiciously like bits of wood. He also had a bizarre unnamed instrument that consisted of a length of string pulled tightly between the corner of a tea chest and a thin pole protruding from the other corner of the chest. It was played like a double bass, and Jerome the French guy, who had a turn, looked quite accomplished with the instrument by the end of his Gallic set. The Americans were brought up on stage to sing Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land," and Don Maclean's "American Pie," while the English made a poor effort at "YMCA," which isn't English at all, but at this stage things were getting a little confused, especially since Ramon the Swiss guy was up on stage too. Alcohol tends to accommodate these infractions, however, and nobody was complaining. Well, almost nobody. After she had come down from the stage, Jane told us that she was more than a little miffed at Ramon because he was monopolizing the microphone. Denise and I were summoned onto the stage for "Dirty Aul Town." Not that we volunteered our nationality. "Are there any Irish people here?" Bob had bellowed into the microphone, like he had done for the other nationalities. Our companions, whom we had dared to call friends, lost no time in revealing our presence to Bob, and pushed and prodded us towards the front of the crowd. Denise was given the tambourine and I was given the music sticks. Bob tactfully lowered the level on our microphone, for which Denise and I were extremely thankful, since we didn't really know the words. Denise rattled her tambourine heartily and I banged my sticks in appreciation. We were soon joined by the two girls in our group from Japan, and Bob launched into some Japanese ballad. Denise and I rattled and banged all the more vigorously. The night rolled on, as did the drinks, and before long everybody was drunk enough to do a stupid hands-in-the-air and wiggle-the-hips dance. Bob had just the song in mind, and instructed us on the words and actions for the highly entertaining "Home Among the Gum Trees" song, which went a little something like this: Give me a home <Arms form "A" shape over head, with hands straight and fingers touching> Among the gum trees, <Hands over head, waving> With lots of plum trees <Arms above head moving up and down like climbing a ladder> A sheep <Hands on head> or two <Peace sign with first two fingers of right hand> And a kanga-roo, <Hop up and down with upper arms by sides, forearms and hands flat out in front and fists clenched> A clothesline <Cross forearms in front of face> out the back, <Point right thumb back over shoulder> A verandah out the front <Hand shades eyes while head gazes from side to side> And an old rocking chair <Rock back and forth like you are on a rocking chair. Do not make drunken pelvic thrusts like Scott> <Repeat> <Wait for Bob to sing a verse> <Repeat> <Wait for Bob to sing next verse> <Repeat twice for grand finale> <Congratulate your companions on their excellent kangaroo hops> The evening continued in that vein, with dancing to Gloria Gaynor and other eighties wonders playing on the video jukebox. Once we had exhausted their selection of hits, we moved on to our hostel's niteclub, but the switch to techno was too much to take. Denise and I faded out of the lights and the music. PREVIOUS | NEXT | HOME | CONTENTS | ABOUT | SEND EMAIL