my vacation in the Australian outback

Some shops at Dunedoo

Semi-arid regions
    My vacation in Australia started a while ago. I packed three books and a kindle so I wouldn't bore myself in the car.
    The first drive in the trip was one of the longest. I watched the landscape as the hilly forest I live in gave way to the Blue Mountains, a huge plateau split by gorges. After the Blue Mountains was the Great dividing range, a huge area in eastern Australia that divides the forests at the coast from the desert at the other side of the range. There was hill after hill, in between there was an expanse taken up mostly by farms that harvested big yellow fields of canola and big green fields of other plants.
    After a while, there were less and less hills, and at one point none at all. This was part of the semi-arid regions of Australia, past the Great dividing range. The land looked much the same as the land in between the hills of the Great dividing range, with colourful fields and small towns.

My family around an old well at the Old Dubbo
Gaol

Behind bars
    After eating lunch at a small town called Dunedoo, My family stopped at Dubbo, a city to the west of Dunedoo. The first attraction I saw at Dubbo was the historical Old Dubbo Gaol.
    The Old Dubbo Gaol was a prison built for colonists before Australia became a nation, and since has been made into a museum. I went through a self-guided tour that was marked on the map. I learned about the conditions that prisoners there would undergo. A bed would be a straw mattress and a pillow stuffed with straw. The prisoners were daily taken to an exercise yard and, if the sentence was hard labour, a work area. In the same building as the men's cells there are two dark rooms. They have two inch thick iron doors and six inches of dirt packed above the ceiling, to block out all of the noise. Sometimes prisoners would be put into these dark rooms where they would see no light and hear absolutely nothing. Other features of the Old Dubbo Gaol include the gallows, where eight hangings were performed, and the guard tower at the northeast corner of the gaol wall.
    After seeing the Old Dubbo Gaol, My family put up a tent at the big 4 Dubbo parklands. At this camp site there was a recreation room with a table tennis table and a movie shown by an overhead projector. There wasn't very much to do though, and I occupied myself by reading a World Book encyclopedia. After dinner, I came into the tent and tried to sleep. I was kept up by the lights and noise of the campground and only got 6 hours of sleep. I thought all of the campgrounds would be like this.

Giraffes at the Taronga Western Plains Zoo

Western plains
    The next day, I went to the recreation room to eat breakfast.  I noticed that the movies in the recreation room were from a Foxtel channel showing family movies. I think the movies weren't very good, and I thought they looked like Foxtel just sorted out all of the worst movies, and picked the ones that were the best rated.
    Then my family went to the Dubbo Zoo, also called the Taronga Western Plains zoo. I have been to the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, and I would say it was similar in some ways, different in others. The Dubbo Zoo had a hippo pond, a few lemurs, and many other African and Asian animals. My favourite was the Eland, and I was surprised at the name because "Eland" in dutch means 'moose'. I also enjoyed seeing the elephants and an endangered Asian species of horse called Przewalski's horse.
    After a very cold cloudy night, we packed everything up and hit the road. The next stop was Cobar.

The outback. It is far from a bare desert.

Outback
    The landscape changed again as I looked out the window. Slowly, the farms changed to a forest with low-growing trees. Then I caught glimpses of red sand. Later, close to Alice Springs, I was to learn that the sand was ordinary white sand with a layer of iron around it. The trees stopped, and there were small bushes covering the ground, in between them more red sand.
    This was an area of Australia called the outback. It takes up most of Australia and is completely desert. As I went I saw hill after hill after hill, and I can imagine that when the first explorers came into the outback with camels, they got pretty bored of the landscape. The only things that disturb the endless hills are salt pans, where lakes used to be but dried up, leaving the salt they dissolved from the crumbly soil in the outback.
    We stopped at Cobar to see the big beer can. The 'big things' are attractions in Australia that are, obviously, models of ordinary things that are a lot bigger than life-size(And they are worth getting out of the car and seeing!). Besides the big beer can, I have also seen the big merino at Goulburn. The big banana at Brisbane was the first 'big thing' to be built.
    After we started driving again, we went on a very long drive west to Broken Hill, a town close to the South Australia/NSW border.

Exploring a ruin at Silverton

39 dips
    My family drove to the information centre and got nothing but a few maps. On Them I was able to spot weird names like Oxide Street and Sulphide street, Two streets that I saw when I was looking out the car window earlier.
    When we finally found out where it was, we drove to the Broken Hill Tourist Park. Then we parked at the 'tents only' zone and put up the tent.
    The next morning, we drove the car through the 39 dips to Silverton. Once in every 10 meters or so, there was a sign that said 'DIP', and then a curve downward in the road. After we passed all of the dips, we arrived at Silverton.
    Silverton is a small abandoned town outside broken hill. It and its surrounding hills are the place where more than a hundred movies and advertisements have been shot. It is also a good place to see ruins. The ruined buildings include a church, a few houses, and a school that has been made into a museum. There are a few buildings where you can buy souvenirs, But not very much else that is still running. Still, visiting Silverton is a nice way to see the things that are so common in the outback.
    That night, when I was walking away from the playground at the Broken Hill Tourist Park, I looked up, and saw the sky covered with stars. I was able to spot the star Antares inside the constellation Scorpius. Those were two things I could recognise in the night sky, which I spent about half an hour looking at. Then I went inside the tent and slept. It wasn't nearly as bad as the Dubbo campground, without bright lights and without loud sounds.

An airplane on display at the Flying Doctors

Lane Lane
    The next day, Me and my family visited an old mine near Broken Hill, but I didn't get to go inside it. I learned that Broken Hill is famous for its silver mining, which led to the name of the town.
    The next thing I saw around Broken Hill was the Flying Doctors for the area of Broken Hill and Adelaide. 
    The Flying Doctors is a federal organisation that helps sick and injured people in the outback. Many homes and towns are so remote they cannot be reached by hospitals or ambulances, so they have to be reached by plane. The Flying Doctors has airplanes that are small and can land on short runways. During a tour, I saw some of the airplanes, as well as an old radio that the Flying Doctors used before more technology came along.
    After seeing the Flying Doctors I went to a museum about Broken Hill.
    Besides silver, the Broken Hill mines dug up all kinds of gems and minerals. This led to the names of many roads, including Oxide Street, Sulphide Street(see beginning of the section above; '39 dips'), Kaolin Street, Crystal Street, and Uranium Street!
    At the museum is a display showing some of the crystals that were mined in Broken Hill. There is also a model of a tree completely made of silver, called, 'The Silver Tree'. As I rode home I saw more roads named after minerals, like Garnet Street and Galena Street. I even saw a street called 'Lane Ln'.
    That night I looked at some stars, then fell asleep.

The middle of nowhere
    It was a long drive the next day. On the way we passed Port Augusta and also saw many salt pans. They are very common in the outback and there is one big salt pan far north of Port Augusta. It is called Lake Eyre(pronounced 'heir') and fills up with water every pelican breeding season. The pelicans then gather around the shores of the lake, and after the second clutch of eggs have hatched, Lake Eyre drains into the ocean and the pelicans fly away.
    Port Augusta is a city in South Australia that lies at the end of the Spencer Gulf. After we drove through it, there was not a cloud the whole day, and it was very hot. That evening, we camped at a very small town, population 30, called Glendambo. It was so remote, there was no light pollution, making the sky brilliant. It was probably the most beautiful night sky in the entire trip.

My brother at the Big Winch Lookout

A town made of opals
    Once we drove away from Glendambo the next morning, we saw the same outback landscape.
    It is hard for people to imagine the Australian outback. It is a desert with red sand, but in most places the ground is covered with bushes. There are a few trees as well, and a grassy plant called Spinifex.  There are many other types of plants as well.
    After a few hours, big lumps of earth and rock came into view. These were dug up from opal mines around the next stop; Coober Pedy, which is well known in the outback for its underground buildings and opal mining. The next thing we saw was the sign with the name of the town(It has a truck on top of it), and the Big Winch.
    The Big Winch is another of Australia's big things, and from its standpoint on a hill it can be seen from all over Coober Pedy. We drove to the top of the hill, got out of the car, and saw the town from the Big Winch Lookout. We saw many buildings, a drive-in theatre, and a few more hills, one of them with an opal shop on top of it. I remember seeing Coober Pedy filled and surrounded with a tan-red colour, the colour of the dust there.
    There was also the Winch. It was very tall and was carrying a bucket with a diameter of about two meters(six feet). On display is the broken and bent handle of the original, which was destroyed in a storm.
    The next thing we saw at Coober Pedy was the Old Timers Mine. It used to be a disused mine, but it was rediscovered when a citizen of Coober Pedy broke into it when digging out a girl's bedroom. The Old Timers Mine has a self guided tour, which I took, and along It I saw some of the tools miners in Coober Pedy use, as well as some opals and opalised seashells they dug up.
    At the end of the Old Timers Mine, there is a fun activity for kids. There is a pit full of rocks there, and about 75% of them are opals. I dug up some very beautiful ones, and I still keep them at home. Most of the opals in the pit are completely white, and of absolutely no value. A few sparkle one or two colours. I think the rocks in the pit are the least precious opals miners dig up around Coober Pedy, but they are still worth going to the museum, if you have kids.
    We didn't camp there for tonight. Instead we set off again through the world of small bushes, trees that take decades to grow to an undersized height, and red sand.

No, this is not Uluru, this is Mount Connor

Kangaroo
      Marla is a town north along the highway from Coober Pedy. Compared to the vast outback, it is only a dust speck. We camped there for the night, and then kept driving.
    Towns in the outback, such as Marla and Glendambo, are incredibly small. They still seem to attract tourists on a road trip, as they seem to be the only things for miles and miles. People who work or live in those places get their resources from 46-wheeled trucks called road trains.
    There was a long and hot drive after Marla, even hotter than it was when we were visiting Coober Pedy. As we got nearer and nearer to the center of Australia, it kept getting hotter.
    It wasn't long before we saw Uluru.
    Well, not really.
    There was a huge red rock, standing out against the hills and bushes around. We drove past it, and then it went out of sight. On the road map we had, we should have bumped into Yulara by now.
    It turned out this was actually Mt Connor. It is a gigantic sandstone rock, like Uluru, but it is standing on a pile of eroded rock and its top is flat. Many tourists(including us) mistake Mt Connor for Uluru at first. It is more like a mesa than a rock. Mt Connor can be seen on the road from Alice Springs and Marla to Yulara.

Me and my brothers in front of Uluru at the
Ayers Rock Resort

Arkose
    The Indigenous Australians are the people that have lived in Australia for a long time before white settelers came.  They invented the spear, woomera, clapping sticks and boomerang. The Indigenous Australians, also called the Aboriginies, are sort of like the American Indians. There are many of them in Northern Territory, due to the Northern Territory containing the last tribes to be discovered by the English, and the Aboriginal Protection Act.
    The Aboriginal Protection Act was passed in 1869, and ran for 101 years until, in 1970, the Aboriginal Lands Act was passed, which made the Act abandoned. The Aboriginal Protection Act made Aboriginies lose their freedom and took their children away from them to learn in Australian schools. As a result, Aboriginal reserves started losing their population and closing, which was the reason the Aboriginal Lands Act was passed.
    Uluru is a sacred place for the Aboriginals. It is also very famous and attracts tourists from all over the world.
    Soon, Uluru came into sight. It looked a lot bigger than Mt Connor, and a lot redder. I heard it is made of Arkose, a type of sandstone.
    After driving past Uluru, we camped at the Ayers Rock Resort and stayed there until the next morning, at one time in the afternoon going to a lookout to see Uluru.

A sacred place
    The next morning, we went up close to Uluru and had a tour on a walk that went to a small waterhole at one side. The tour guide explained how the Aboriginals in the area used a woomera(spear thrower) and how they made collecting bowls. The local Aboriginals also made a hard-setting glue from a plant called Spinifex, which grows all over the outback.
    The tour guide showed us to a sandstone cave, where there were cave paintings of leaves and animal tracks. The dating of the cave paintings suggests that Aboriginals have been at Uluru for over 10,000 years.
    There was also a cave where the old people would live, a cave for women, a cave for men, and a cave for children(next to the womens' cave). The paintings in the old peoples' cave were mostly groups of rings(a ring inside another one, inside another one, and so on), which can mean a waterhole or a special place. The Aboriginals would sometimes make maps on cave walls.
    The mens' cave had strange rock features on the walls. In one Dreaming Myth, some of the Mala men(a Mala is a rabbit-like animal that lives in the outback) got killed by a monster and turned into the rock formations.
    The tour ended at a very small waterhole. The rock above the waterhole was black with algae where there is a waterfall when it rains. There were also black streaks above. The Aboriginals used to drink from the waterhole.
    Besides a guided tour, you can also climb to the summit of Uluru. I advise you NOT to do that. Here are some reasons:
    1: It causes pollution. Most of the water that drains off of Uluru goes into a larger waterhole. The water there is now ruined because of camera batteries and ordinary rubbish.
    2: Uluru is a sacred place for the Aboriginals. There are cave paintings at the top, and they are being worn down. It is best to leave it alone.
    3: There have been deaths. About five people have died falling off the side.
    So please care for the waterhole, listen to the Aboriginals, and refrain from  climbing Uluru for your own safety.

(There are no photos in this section because we were not allowed to take any on the tour. Uluru is a place that you can see best with your own eyes.)

Dreamtime
     Then we went to the visitors center and learned more about the Aboriginals' culture. The children would work with the women until they grew up, when they started learning about how to survive. Men learned things like hunting, skinning meat, and throwing boomerangs, while women learned how to dig for grubs, cook, and harvesting things from plants. Men were strictly not allowed to watch women's ceremonies or watch or do what women were doing, and vice versa.
    The Aboriginals believed in a time called the Dreamtime or Dreaming, a time when there was nothing but spirits, named after local animals. All Aboriginal creation myths are set in the Dreaming. These myths can explain permanent landmarks, such as rock formations on Uluru, or features in plants. There are three known myths about Uluru(But I cannot perfectly recall any of them, so I guess you will have to go there yourself!)
    Many towns in the outback are named after Aboriginal words, such as Marla, which means 'Kangaroo', and Coober Pedy, which means 'white man in a hole'.
    When I got back to the tent in Ayers Rock Resort Campgroud, it was extremely hot. This seems surprising, because it was July, and in the southern hemisphere that is the middle of winter! Imagine how hot it must be in the middle of outback Australia, in the summer!

    That was part of the story of my August family's trip into outback Australia. I might post the next part later.