Category: Australia

It being a  UNESCO-heritage site and one of Australia’s most iconic landmarks, a visit to Uluru (and Kata Tjuta) is nothing short of pilgrimage. In our earlier posts, we had mentioned how the “soul” of Australia (the real aboriginal history & its associated culture, national parks, the rugged outback, wild life and bird watching ) resided in the least-visited state of Northern Territory. And so it was time to fly from Sydney to the tiny airport of Ayers Rock on our least favorite but highly punctual airline Jetstar. The crazy accommodation prices reflect the remoteness of the place so we chose the cheapest private room at Outback Pioneer Lodge, which still set us back by $150 a night. All facilities and hotels are situated at a tiny town called Yulara, 20 kms from Uluru rock.

We wanted to spend all afternoon at Uluru, watching its colors change till sunset. At 3 pm, the sunset viewing car park was deserted (and at 6 pm jampacked), allowing us to choose a vantage point to enjoy the rock.

It looks dark brown in early afternoon hours.

Mika spent a couple of hours sketching the rock and you can tell it’s a cute effort.

A close up of the rock reveals a very rugged surface.

The customary silly pictures were taken with no one around.

By now the color has changed to light brown.

At around 5 pm, Uluru looks golden orange. A quick primer on Uluru: The monolithic sandstone rock is an astonishing 3.6 km long, 1.9 km wide, 348 high with a circumference of 9.6 kms. It was created 600 million years ago and the Aborigines have inhabited the region for over 10,000 years. To these indigenous “Anangu”people, the “rock” is of great spiritual significance as this is where their ancestors had interacted with the landscape. In their culture, these ancestral beings had created their culture at the beginning of time. Climbing the rock is prohibited by the indigenous folks even though a large number of visitors do it. Two-thirds of the rock is still underground.

And as the sun goes down, the color changes to Ochre.

The last shot of the day before we left around 7 pm. First project executed successfully.

At 6 am the next morning, we set out for Kata Tjuta (also knows as “The Olgas”), which is as pretty as Uluru. It is a series of 36 rock domes dating back 500 million years. The sunrise view point beautifully revealed the morning colors of the rocks.

The 7.4 km Valley of the Winds walk at Kata Tjuta has been rated by seasoned travelers as the best of the region. After the sunrise, we gobbled our packed breakfast and headed off for the spectacular walk. Full of gorges and lovely rugged scenery, it took us around 3 hours to finish including water breaks and photo stops. Very cool.

The indigenous cultural show back at the resort, frankly, was a little lame mainly due to extremely bored-looking dancers.

Kings Canyon, part of Wattarka National Park in NT, is 4 hours away from Uluru and its famed 6 km “King’s Canyon “Rim Walk” has been rated by some travelers as bettering even Uluru & Kata Tjuta. We were on a mission, so brushing the distance aside we started at 3:30 am and drove non-stop for 4 hours. At 5 am, we got super excited looking at some wild dogs which ended up being cattle!  Due to excessive heat, the walk is usually closed by the rangers by 9 am to protect the hikers, oops.. sorry, “Bushwalkers”! We managed to start much before that.

The EXTREMELY steep 100-150 step vertical climb at the start has been named as “the heartbreak hill” ( or “heart attack hill” by some morbid souls) by the locals. But once you are past it, the enchanting views of the gorge and the valley below makes the whole effort worth it.

This is my favorite shot. We were constantly (with oodles of nostalgia) reminded of the rim walk at Grand Canyon Arizona. Of course the distance between the two rims at GC was vast but there are no clear winners !

Sometimes it is good to pause and introspect on the purpose of life which these two seem to be doing remarkably well !

A morning well spent and we were done by 11 am. After a four hour drive back, we had no energy left but we still enjoyed the live one-man blues band at the lodge over dinner.

Our last morning was spent again at the Uluru rock enjoying the mesmerizing morning colors of rock, from the sunrise viewing point called Talinguru Nyakunytjaku. In retrospect, I feel funny having spent countless hours googling for the best sunset and sunrise viewpoints, in the end choosing the obvious and official ones. But that is the human spirit – it does not stop till it has satisfactorily found an answer howsoever lame it may be. This is how the morning colors changed from dark to light:

We then quickly drove around the circumference of the rock to get a wider perspective in addition to bush walking the short Kuniya and Mala walks.

Feeling the spiritual energy up close.

The closest shot of the rock reveals a rugged surface with loads of moon-like craters. It’s like life – a situation or a person that looks picture perfect from a distance, reveals its true colors or imperfections at worst, when you come too close !

The pilgrimage had come to an end. As we boarded our Melbourne flight, Mika managed to click these lovely pictures of Uluru from the plane – putting its vastness into perspective. Thanks for reading and see you in Melbourne & Great Ocean Road !

The 4 hour long Virgin Australia flight from Darwin to Sydney reminded us how HUGE the Australian continent was. We laughed at the irony that at twice the India’s size, Australia has only 24 million denizens compared to India’s 1250 million !! Meha, Mika and I had pledged to focus more on wildlife, nature and culture (the real things of life) in this world trip than big cities, which are all the same more or less. The Sydney planning dilemma was elegantly solved by dividing equal time between urban and rural Sydney. What better choice for first stop, than Blue Mountains National park – only 2 hours from Sydney. As the sun was going down, Mika managed this fantastic aerial shot of the iconic Sydney landmarks from the plane.

Europcar rental sorted out, we headed straight to our lovely AirBnB cottage at Mt. Victoria in Blue Mountains, making a quick stop at Coles at Katoomba, for our groceries.

Easily the finest AirBnB we have stayed so far, the tastefully done bed 2 bedroom cottage in a peaceful setting immediately reminded us of the lovely English towns. This is how it looked like in the morning. Very relaxing.

Tired from our marathon trip of Northern Territory, we chose to enjoy a relaxed morning sipping English breakfast tea. The sole itinerary for the day was to visit Jenolan Caves. Part of the Oberon mountains in New South Wales, these lime stone caves are truly spectacular. You have to pre-book from a bunch of them and we did not regret our choice of Lucas caves. A very engaging commentary by our gregarious guide made it all the more interesting.

We had fallen in love with our pretty cottage so we came back and watched “The Mummy” which somehow felt so much more nicer in the relaxed setting. What rubbish – was my first reaction when I had seen it first a few years ago. It reminded us of how big role the state of mind plays in evaluating the SAME circumstance !

The next morning, we headed to Echo Point in Katoomba which has the best view of the Blue mountains. Delighted at finding free parking and a near-empty view point, we stayed for 30 minutes and enjoyed the peaceful setting before it would be run over by day trippers from Sydney.

One of the key views from Echo point is of “The 3 sisters”. Legend is that a sorcerer turned three sisters into stone to protect them from roving eyes of three lustful young men, but died before turning them back into humans. Given the majestic setting, I’m sure the 3 sisters have enjoyed the solitude for centuries and probably would not want to come back as humans to this very touristy town !

Our next stop was Sublime Point, which true to its name, provided even more serene views than its more famous sister, Echo Point.

A quick visit to Blue Mountains lake was next with Mika truly fascinated by the frolicking of this cute one.

Wentworth Falls look out point had some outstanding views of the Blue Mountains:

Our last stop for the day was Govett’s Leap Lookout at Blackheath, thankfully only a couple of miles from our cottage.

While researching Australia, the top question on our minds was “Where to see Kangaroos in the wild?”. A TripAdvisor (thanks to this site and its members for answering millions of such questions for the whole year) article from 2012 had pointed to a place called Euroka Clearing – between Blue Mountains and Sydney. As we check out of our cottage and headed to Sydney via Euroka clearing, our thoughts were filled with positive anticipation. With not a soul in site at Euroka, we thought that was a great thing as we could have the Kangaroos all for ourselves. The initial bird sightings were wonderful.

We searched all over for 2 hours for Kangaroos and almost gave up (also since a trekker mentioned they would congregate here mostly in the afternoons and it was still 11 am), when THIS happened:

There are days in life when you TOTALLY luck out, and today was our day. We had these Kangaroos for ourselves out in the wild for a full 2 hours before one van arrived. We devoured the magical experience with glee, triumphantly patting ourselves in the back . The pictures below speak for themselves.

By 1 pm, we were Kangaroo-ed out and headed to Sydney to the next AirBnB which disappointingly was not as great as the earlier one. This is the thing with AirBnB – with no standardization, some days will certainly not be yours. Any way, Aus-SA cricket was on and with home made Khichdi as companion, what else do you need ! We returned the car and crashed.

The next morning was reserved for city sight seeing – mainly the Harbour bridge, Opera House and the Botanical gardens. By the way, did you know Sydney was only formed in 1790 when the English (who else !) invaded and drove out the Aboriginal people from Sydney area (what’s new ?).  This Limo in central Sydney kicked off proceedings for the day.

The outstanding view of the Sydney Opera House from the Harbour bridge, truly takes your breath away. Having taken a metro, we walked the whole bridge North to South, ending up in Circular Quay.

At circular quay, it was time to take the customary public ferry to Manly Island and back, little realizing how ferocious the waves were – completely drenching us – making an ass of us in front of thousands of tourists ! Mika always has a ball seeing daddy’s misery in these funny circumstances!!

We walked up the Opera house steps but frankly it looks better from a distance. Our last stop for the day was adjoining botanical gardens.

New Year planning celebrations were on in full swing:

At the mid point in the gardens, you get this great view of both the iconic landmarks together.

Next we walked all the way up to Mrs. Macquarie’s point and did not understand what was all the fuss about as the views had been better from earlier points. Exhausted, we headed back home for a much deserved nap.

Evening has been reserved for the Coogee beach to Bondi Beach walk. We screwed up our bus timings, resulting in a minor family altercation, and missed the walk. Blessing in disguise as the LONG walk was over 6 kms, so we sat and enjoyed the Bondi Beach views.

Next morning we headed to the Sydney Cricket Ground guided tour. With so many child hood memories including walking up at 5:30 am in India for the test match radio commentary, an upswell of emotions was natural. We started with the adjoining Allianz stadium, used mainly for Australian football, of which most Indians like us have no clue.

The SCG tour began with this classic analog turnstile. Vintage stuff.

Feverishly clicking pictures in the main stadium as if there was no tomorrow, I finally calmed down.

The classic pavilion and member’s stand view:

Mika was disappointed at the “ordinariness” of the dressing rooms, expecting them to be much more posh!

Mika’s day was made by touching Smith and Warner’s water bottles !

The museum had some great memories from the past but we were being rushed by the guide – I would have liked to spent at least an hour here.

How can I forget this series! After being 0-2 down, we came back strongly to win the next 2 tests before narrowly losing the series 2-3.

The guy I absolutely worshiped as a kid :

We had a quick coffee in the SCG member’s area before heading off to Darling Harbour.

Evening was reserved for Bondi Beach:

Very interesting culture of having “swimming pools” next to beaches. It was too cold to swim though.

Another of Mika’s master creations:

And that concluded our Sydney trip. Tomorrow we fly to Ayers Rock for Part 2 of our Northern Territory exploration. Will Uluru and Kata Tjuta rocks live up to the hype? We shall see. Thanks for reading our blog at www.manysharpbends.com and see you at Uluru.

After an exhilarating 10 days in Queensland, it was time to explore the Australian “Outback” (Aussie for wilderness) at Northern Territory – the remotest and least known of all Australian states, but the most beautiful and “real” Australia in our opinion. Most tourists confine themselves to the standard “Melbourne-Sydney-Gold Coast” circuit – that’s a real shame in our opinion, as the true riches lie in NT. The famed Uluru & Kata Tjuta rocks also belong to NT but that is for another blog. Darwin as the base to explore the upper part of Northern Territory reminded us of North East India – so far from main action that it seems another world. It is closer to Timor Sea and Papua New Guinea than main parts of Australia ! After being penalized 50 AUD by Jetstar for excess baggage in the previous leg, the Air North flight from Cairns to Darwin via Gove, was a real charm with free food and baggage allowance.

We landed in the tropical heat of Darwin and were immediately upgraded by the Punjabi dude at Hertz counter from sedan to SUV. You can take an Indian out of India but you can’t take India out of him/her! Darwin is primarily a launch pad to explore the national parks of NT – notably Kakadu, Litchfield & Katherine. We hung around for a day exploring the botanical garden, NT museum and the waterfront. Darwin was at the center of action during WW II and also was devastated by Cyclone Tracy in 1974 in which 65 people perished.

Having made full use of the Ramada infinity pool, our real outback journey began the next morning as we headed off through Stuart highway to Litchfield National Park – famous for its lovely swimming rock pools and termite mounds.

We stopped briefly at the small town of Batchelor to capture some interesting bird life, including our first glimpse of the lovely sulphur-crested cockatoo.

Soon after the magnetic termite mounds appeared – looking like tombstones. Built by termites they are amazing architectural wonders containing arches, tunnels, chimneys etc, and are aligned north-south to minimize exposure to sun. You also get to see the giant Cathedral Termite mounds.

It was time to swim in the lovely rock pool of Buley Rock Hole, where the water cascades through a series of rock pools.

Next up was Florence falls with a steep descent to a deep pool surrounded by lush greenery. We were brave enough only to venture in the shallow part. Some intrepid souls were doing cliff jumping – too adventurous for us.

Litchfield done, a four hour drive brought us to Katherine which is famous for its gorges. A quick visit to the culture center was a flop as there was nothing to see but Mika posed for the customary photos nevertheless.

Beagle Motor Inn was bit of a disaster with tiny rooms and antique microwave which meant it took more than hour to heat our pasta. Oh well, it cannot beat El Mirador in Cusco – our worst accomodation of the trip.

Next morning we headed off to the famed 2-gorge tour of Katherine gorge, but not before meeting some exciting wild life at the boat landing.

The Nitmiluk gorge tour (Nitmiluk is the original Aboriginal name of Katherine)  reminded us of the Colorado river and Grand Canyon. A series of 13 deep sandstone gorges have been cut by nature through Katherine river between Arnhem land and Timor sea.

Jawoyn people are the traditional Aboriginal owners of this land who manage the park in partnership with the Australian government.

Another four hour drive through Arnhem Highway brings us to Cooinda, our first stop in Kakadu National Park. Not before bit off a scary adventure when I momentarily dozed off behind the wheels almost causing an accident! And boy we loved those cargo trucks which are amusingly called as “Road Trains” !

Kakadu National Park, 20000 sq kms in area, is famous for Aboriginal culture, Rock art, billabongs (water ways) and some lovely wildlife and birds. We checked into Cooinda lodge and headed straight to the Warradjan Aboriginal culture center, which depicts the aboriginal culture.

Armed with the initial orientation, we headed off to Nourlangie – which has an imposing escarpment of red stand stone and famed rock art. The rock art which is between 20,000 to 10 years old, depicts “dreaming” stories and its an important cultural link between Aboriginal people and their ancestoral teachings. Some paintings are believed to have been made by mimi spirits (the “creation” ancestors) – a fact difficult to dispute , given the amazing height of some of these paintings which are impossible for humans to climb ! The 2 km walking loop took us first to Anbangbang Shelter which was used for refuge, and then to Anbangbang Gallery – the famed rock art. One of the main paintings features Nabulwinjbulwinj, the mean spirit who ate females !

On the way in, we had been rewarded with a chance encounter with a Wallaroo.

A spectacular sunset was just the right way to wind down today’s proceedings.

As an aside, the Nourlangie traditional owners rejected millions of dollars in revenues from French nuclear giant Areva for uranium mining, choosing to integrate that land with the national park – an amazingly positive example of environment conservation.

The next morning we were treated to the exquisite bird life of Kakadu in the yellow water cruise. Highlights include magpie goose, green pygmy goose, pelicans, Jabiru stork, herons, egrets, cormorants, eagles, kites, kingfishers, crocodiles and much more. The creeks that cut through the park result in mighty waterfalls in the rainy season. Then they flood the plains to the West Alligator, South Alligator and East alligator rivers – no alligators are found in Kakadu, only crocodiles !! Those are the amusing side effects of colonization – some clueless idiot names stuff wrongly and it stays!

After the yellow water cruise, we headed off to Jabiru and enroute did the 2 km Bardeddjildji Sandstone walk. You are rewarded with some wonderful eroded sandstone formations.

Next up was Manngarre Monsoon forest walk where we encountered thousands of bats – never seen anything like this before !

Close to Jabiru, Ubirr is the second mecca of Aboriginal rock art, apart from Nourlangie. Images include kangaroos, tortoises and x-ray fish – this was the main style 8000 years ago.

We spent an hour at the Nardab Lookout, which provided lovely views of Jabiru from the escarpment.

This painting at Ubirr is of Rainbow Serpent – a deity specially revered by the Aboriginal people.

At Jabiru, we checked into the Mercure Crocodile hotel, which is shaped as a crocodile !

The deal with Mika the next morning was that mummy & daddy would sneak out at 6 am to Mamakula wetlands while she slept. Mamakula,20 km east of South Alligator river, has some wonderful bird watching opportunities and we were additionally rewarded with a kangaroo encounter in the classic “jumping” pose.

It was time to sleep rest of the day and commence our 4 hour journey the next morning to Darwin airport via Arnhem Highway. All of Meha’s wildlife wishes had been fulfilled except the sighting of the Blue-winged Kookaburra. God obliged again with “Tathastu” (So be it) and we had the sighting within 15 minutes !!

And we had our last meeting with the Cockatoos !

We made a brief stop at Window on the wetlands and Fogg Dam – two very educational resources on the birds and wildlife of the region.

And the last Kangaroo sighting !

As we turned from Arnhem highway to Stuart Highway for Darwin airport, the first part of our Northern Territory adventure came to an and. We now head to Sydney before flying to Ayers Rock for NT part 2 (Uluru & Kata Tjuta rocks). See you in Sydney + Blue Mountains and keep reading our blog at www.manysharpbends.com