Don`t Look Outback in Anger

As we started our descent into Alice Springs all I could see through the window was a floor of red with the occasional patch of green bush, this took me back to growing up in Glasgow in the 70’s & 80’s where instead of learning the beautiful game on turf it was skint knees & Dettol scrubs after a kick about on red blaze. This never deterred me too much as most of my childhood I would be out playing football somewhere or other, usually somewhere you weren’t supposed to be like the local library grounds, school playground or out on the street. You think all this practice would have made me a good player but it never worked out that way. One season I won the Most Improved Player while playing for St Robert’s Guild, and I can always remember one of the other players saying at the time “You must have been really rubbish at the start of the season”. The following season I won the “Loyalty” trophy which was also another award invented to make the crap players better about themselves.

We were picked up at the airport by the hostel and where in our rooms unpacking within 20 minutes of landing. We had booked to stay at Annie’s Place Hostel for one night each side of a three day tour into the outback and round Uluru (Ayers Rock), but due to a festival being held in Alice Springs the tour had been put back a day. This meant we had two days each side of the tour in Alice Springs, so we decided to wander into town and have a look around to see what the town had to offer. We soon realised we weren’t the only outsiders in town that day as about a 30 to 40 Harley Davidson Bikes passed us on our short trip into town. We quickly found out that it was the Harley owners national jamboree, I’m not sure if they call it a jamboree but they do seem a bit like the Boy Scouts with their matching greasy uniforms.

Well it took us about 25 minutes to walk the full length of Alice Springs and that included swotting about 3 million flies, they never mentioned them in the TV adverts or colour brochures. I could have done with one of the brochures to help fend of the disgusting little blighters as they flew up my nose and in and out my ears and we looked enviously at the people walking about the with the fly nets over their heads. We found somewhere for lunch before returning back to the hostel to chill out by the pool for a bit. Just before sunset we reached the top of Anzac Hill on the edge of the town to watch the sun setting over the hills that surround Alice Springs and it was a quick turnaround back to the hostel. I’m not sure if it’s something to do with them both being in the centre of their respective countries but the more time we spent in Alice Springs it seemed more and more like Falkirk all be it with a little more sun. Back at the Hostel, Falkirk’s finest Arab Strap seemed to be cropping up a bit more than usual on the random setting on the MP3. I can just imagine Aiden Moffat out here in his best bush gear hailing imaginary taxis as he’s bundled out the pub at closing time whinging about some Shelia who’s dumped him.


Annie’s Place likes to cover all the bases for backpackers with decent rooms, swimming pool, internet café, tours, laundry, kitchen facilities, a bar and restaurant. All residents can get any meal on the menu for $5 AUS (about £2.20), the food turned out to be really good and on the first night Joanne had breaded chicken and chips and I went for the kangaroo curry. The staff were all really friendly and they always seemed to remember you name, not bad considering the hostel had space for up to 75 guests and were changing almost daily.

Next day we headed to “Henley on Todd Regatta” an event that has been staged in Alice Springs for the last 44 years and had been declared an iconic event by the Northern Territory Government which seems to attract nutters from all around the world. Well this wasn’t your usual regatta with upper class twits larking about on rivers in between their Pims and cucumber sandwiches, first of all the river was bone dry and the only drink to be had was VB or XXXX lager. The first event seemed quite tame as teams of four ran up and down the dry river bank carrying boat like frames trying to be the first team over the line. We soon realised that there were in fact about 1800 Harley Owners in town and most of them seemed to taking part in some of the many events: Oxford tubs, Tug of War, Sand Shovelling and numerous races with different objects either being carried, pushed or pulled along the river bed.


After heading for some shade in the after afternoon we headed back to watch the finale of the show, the Gun Boat Battle. This was three large floats done up to look like boats which drove round the arena firing water and flour bombs at each other as well as the usual stray missile into the crowd, this went on for about 15 minutes and the place looked like a scene from Apocalypse Now by the end of it, I was expecting Robert Duval at any minute to emerge from the smoke and start shouting “Smell That, Smell That…. I love the smell of Flour in the morning“ or something similar. One of the best things about the whole event were the two commentators who waxed rubbish for hours about each event and who seemed more interested in telling people the Aussie Rules latest scores and saying hello to friends in the crowd. One of the guy’s was like the commentator from the movie “Best in Show” with his stupid questions and weird analogies. Headed back to Annie’s Place for some more $5 meals and off to bed early as it was an early rise for our tour into the outback.


We had to be out our room and in the car park for 6:30am to be picked up by the bus, most of the people who were going on the tour were also staying at Annie’s Place so we didn’t have to drive round picking up from other places. Once we were all on and introduced to the tour guide (also called Chris) it was a short half hour drive out to Noel’s Camel Farm where you got a chance to ride the camels, feed the kangaroos and eat some pigs…..well they did serve bacon rolls. The camel rides only lasted for about 5 minutes but that’s about as much of the smell you could probably handle at that time in the morning. Joanne and myself went on the same camel and all my nightmares from the horse riding in Bolivia came flooding back, but it started off not to bad and even the fast bits I found quite enjoyable. I’m not sure if Joanne quite liked getting off the camel as it lunges forwards and nearly throws you over the top. Once everybody was back on the bus it was a three hour drive to Kings Canyon for our first walk. Along the route we saw many wild camels and horses and a few times we had to slow right down to make sure we didn’t hit any. The camels were brought over in the 1800’s from Lanzarote to help with expeditions into the bush but with the introduction of the railways into Australia’s far flung corners they were just abandoned to the wild where they have flourished and now are being rounded up and sold back to rich Arabians for camel racing.


The walk started with a steep climb in the baking heat but once we reached the top we had a break and the guide Chris told us loads of stuff about the geology and history of the surrounding landscape. The rest of the walk was fairly easy and the canyon was quite stunning in places, we stopped at a waterhole called The Garden of Eden and some of the group went in for a dip. Joanne and myself decided against having a swim as the water was freezing and it was also a bit hazardous getting in and out of the water. On the way round the walk we got speaking to Dyane from near Elgin and Tiffany an Aussie girl, it was quite a diverse group with not that many having English as their first language. We then headed to a cattle ranch called Curtis Springs where we going to be sleeping that night under the stars. You start to understand the sheer size of Australia when the Curtis Springs cattle Ranch is bigger than Belgium.

After searching for firewood in the surrounding bush we set up our swags in a circle around the fire and had a few beers and chatted to some of the group while waiting for dinner to be made. After dinner Joanne and myself were amazed as about half of the group jumped into their swags and went to sleep, the rest of us had a few more drinks around the fire. The swags where a lot more comfortable than I thought they were going to be, the only problem we had sleeping was the full moon shining brightly above us. Next morning it was up at 6:30 but we were surprised how long it got some of the group to get up and ready. Here’s a rundown on the group: 6 Germans, 3 Koreans, 3 English, 2 Belgians, 1 Japanese, 1 Australian, 1 Swiss and of course 3 Scots. The young Swiss and Swedish guys really needed a rocket up their backsides to do anything over the three days of the trip, I couldn’t believe how long it took them to do anything. Also when the Swiss guy was asked to grate some cheese by the tour guide his response was “I don’t know how to do that my Mum does that for me”….needless to say he was shown how to do it and grated the cheese for the whole group.

Once everybody was up and we had cleared the site it was a drive out to the Olgas (Kata Tjuta) where we had a hike through the Valley of the Winds. The walk was fairly easy but the scenery was amazing and once again we had a beautiful day with hardly a cloud in the sky. I had never heard of the Olgas before arriving in Alice Springs and I’m sure if they weren’t as close to Ayers Rock (Uluru) then they would be as famous as their neighbour. We then had a visit to the culture centre at Uluru which had loads of informative displays on Aboriginal culture and why Uluru is so sacred to them. We then had our first chance to get up close to Uluru and for those who wished to defy the aboriginals pleas to not climb Uluru could if they so wish. Joanne and myself decided not to climb as it would be akin to abseiling the Wailing Wall, bunging from the Sistine Chapel roof or Cycling round Mecca the wrong way. We were quite surprised when quite a few of the group decided to climb and especially when Erika one of the Korean girls jumped off the bus, the previous day she had struggled at the first part of Kings Canyon.


While the others climbed we had a chance to walk round the base and have a close look at the many sacred sites that we had read about in the information centre. It didn’t take us to long to walk back round to the van and wait for the rest of the group to descend from the top of Uluru, some of the group where already down. We had arranged to meet a 5pm but by 5:30 Erika was nowhere to be seen and the rest of the climbing group had left her half way up because she was struggling. Chris the guide then had to climb it (well run it almost) to try and find her, this added another 20 minutes to the wait but she was found on the way down oblivious to all the concern down below. When she got back on the bus all she could do was laugh, I’m not sure whether anyone else could see the joke, we then drove a short distance to a viewing point where we could see the sunset on the rock.

Because we were late in leaving we didn’t manage to get a spot with a table so we had to walk a bit further round to get a spot for ourselves. We carried our large cool box of beers round and sat and watched Uluru slowly change colour as the sun set behind us, many people tried to push into our spot but Joanne and few of the girls defended the ground brilliantly. I got speaking to a few of the guys about football and the Belgian guy who I can’t remember his name was amazed I had even heard of Mechelen never mind knew what there strip was like, he knew lots about Scottish football but mainly from seeing Belgian players like Joos Valgaren and Thomas Buffel playing for Celtic and Rangers. Uluru looked really impressive from here and everyone in the world could probably recognise it from this vantage point, while we watched the sunset Bushtucker Chris made dinner and once it was dark we ate and watched the stars appear one by one in the night sky.


Once we reached our camping grounds for the night we had to go in search for firewood again, slightly more difficult doing it in the dark than yesterdays daylight search. Once the fire was going we all sat round the and played a few games, we tried to play Chinese whispers but with 8 different countries in the mix it was always going to be a bit of a disaster. Tak the Japanese guy was sitting next to Joanne and he would never understand her and just make something else up so by the time it was back to the start we had some real strange new phrases. The group seemed a lot more livelier than the night before and most people sat up talking for a few hours even though it was going to be a 4:30 rise so that we could get back down to another viewing point to see the sun rise this time on Uluru.

We were one of the first groups to arrive at the viewing point but this didn’t seem to matter to the people who turned up late as they would just push and shove to get in front and there were nearly a few fights. At one point we tried to get a photo of a Kangaroo sign with Uluru in the background but we had to wait for 15 minutes as a group of 5 Japanese girls mimicking Kangaroos all wanted to check that their photos had worked in each of their own cameras. Another thing could someone please drop us a line and explain to us why that every Japanese person under the age of 30 must do the two fingered peace sign in every single photo that they are in. We have seen this happen everywhere and we‘ve decided to do it all the time in Tokyo so we don’t look too different.


After breakfast it was another hike round Uluru where Chris told us a lot more about the local Aboriginal people and their customs. We also spoke about why there seems to be lots of Aboriginal people drinking in the streets of towns like Alice Springs. After been thrown off your own land and forced to suffer many atrocities over the years is it any wonder that so many don’t want to integrate into a western type society and turn to drink and petrol sniffing as a way out. Back in the bus it was a four hour trip back to Alice Springs and Joanne, Tiffany, Chris the guide and myself had a played the game when you name someone famous for example Steve McQueen then the next person has to name a famous person who’s first name starts with an M and if both first name & surname starts with the same character then the direction changes the other way. This lasted until about 10 minutes outside Alice Springs and it got down to myself and the guide for the last while.

The whole group met up for a meal and a few drinks at Annie’s place, it was quite weird to see everybody dressed up and out of their hiking stuff. I got speaking to Tak from Japan who was asking me about Nakumura who plays for Celtic and I was asking about his Daniel Johnson t-shirt. After a few drinks at Annie’s a crowd of us headed to another bar in Alice Springs, the place was a bit of a barn but it was quite busy for a Tuesday night. After quite a few more drinks, few dances and some weird conversations with Koreans, Swedes and Germans it was back to the hostel for a well earned sleep. Next day we didn’t do too much but chill out by the pool and catch up with our diaries and blogger and we started to read up on Japan. Thursday lunchtime it was time for our flight to Cairns in the north east of Australia.