I could show you a hundred pictures of it, but you wouldn’t understand. It wasn’t just the orange coloured stone, it was the whole experience. When we got of the bus a tall man wearing some sort of hat made out of feathers and leather approached us. He told us that he was going to be our guide throughout the expedition.
At first we all thought his outfit was for entertainment’s sake, but the closer we got to the mountain, the more it seemed like he was really attached to Uluru, or Ayer’s Rock as he called it, in some kind of way. And not just in a “Oh, this is such a beautiful place! Let’s live here!” kind of way, but in a more, I don’t really know how to describe this but it was almost as he talked about Uluru the same way he would tell us about his son.
I was all “It’s a rock man, chill” at first, but when he started telling stories of how the natives believed it had healing powers and how they had special rituals that could only be done here, he had me mesmerized (and trust me, the whole group was just as spellbound as me). And just like we noticed how his voice changed when he talked about Ayer’s rock, his eyes would shine in a special way when someone ask questions allowing him to go deeper into the stories of the aboriginals.
His stories was beautifully illustrated by the cave painting surrounding us and on our way back he told us how European settlers had come to claim the land of Australia. It all started with the arrival of Captain James Cook back in 1770. In a well-known European manner he claimed the east coast of Australia on behalf of Britain, of course without including any of the interests of the people already living there. Later the Englishmen basically used the country as a prison for a large number of their convicts.
The majority of you have probably learned all this at school, and unless you are going to Australia in the nearest future and plan on impressing the locals with you knowledge, you most likely don’t want to hear me retell the history of Australia. Therefore I found this for those of you who’s actually interested:
He’s even Australian so you get to hear their lovely accent. It’s in seven parts so it covers more than the essentials.
Over to something completely different, cricket! On the bus ride home we stopped by a neighbour town to get some food, and behind the little cafeteria we ate in there was a cricket match going on so we decided to watch.
I think the players were about fourteen years old, each team had it’s own suit and name so I figured it was two school teams playing each other. It makes sense because the school year is different in Australia; summer vacation for us isn’t at the same time as theirs.
Cricket is a very popular sport down here, I guess it’s the colonization fault as cricket has its origins in England. It’s also a widespread sport in India, which supports my assumption. In fact England has had a lot of influence overall on Australia’s culture. I might not be the right person to comment on the consequences of colonization but it’s kind of sad that an ancient culture had to be oppressed just because some wealthy men wanted to be even richer.
Other then that, all the Australian I have meet so far seem to be just as I expected them to be, friendly, welcoming and laidback. Another thing I have noticed is that it appears that they are a more thankful people than the Norwegians. I get the feeling that they appreciate family and traditions more than we do. They also seem to have a completely different view on strangers. Maybe that is because tourism is a huge business and many are dependent on travellers here. I like to think that it’s because they’re just nicer than most people though!
I’m going into town now (I know… Crazy, right?) to meet some of the guys I met on the bus trip to Uluru.
Byeee! (I really have no idea how you end a blog post…)
Picture sources: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rebrook/3652865917/in/pool-70793332@N00/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/68394487@N07/6224905490/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/amygoes211/3740695765/ & http://collider.com/uploads/imageGallery/Australia/australia_movie_image.jpg
Ingen kommentarer:
Legg inn en kommentar