Oh and there was the time I saw a submarine

I think this is the end of Australia.

I had completely forgotten about this. We sailed out of Cairns to the Great Barrier Reef, and suddenly this submarine appeared next to our boat. After a few minutes it submerged again, but I'm not sure anyone ever explained to us what it was doing there. Looking at the picture now, I realize that it actually wasn't that big and was possibly some kind of scientific vessel, though it looked enormous at the time.

A suitably strange incident to wrap up pictures from a strange and wonderful place.

Saturday reflections

Moving on—finally!—to Melbourne, here's a double-header of reflections, in the river and the botanical gardens.

Urban poetry

I did post several pictures of this at the time: Hosier Lane in Melbourne, considered to be the best place to see street art in a city that's apparently famous for it. But here are a few more.

Flashback: Simpsons Gap

Before I leave the outback—for real this time—here's one last rock formation, this one in Simpsons Gap, near Alice Springs. Never mind aliens--these rocks look like they're screaming.

Flashback: More Kata Tjuta

It is true that, judging by these pictures, the rocks don't look quite so otherworldly up close. They look a lot like—well, rocks, or any other desert mountains not inhabited by aliens. But I do like the red sands and trees in the surrounding desert.

Flashback: Kata Tjuta

When I said that Kata Tjuta wasn't interesting up close, I may have meant that it didn't have any of the hidden nooks with waterholes and rocks and trees that you find at Uluru. And it is easier to appreciate how very strange it is when you're far enough away to see it in some context.

The name means “many heads”and those domes do look like the heads of some alien creature making itself at home in the harsh landscape.

This picture, with some tiny humans for scale, gives a little idea of how big the domes are. There are 36 of them, and the tallest, Mount Olga, is taller than Uluru.

Flashback: Oops, not so fast! (Kata Tjuta)

I wasn't finished with the outback after all.

Uluru is located in a national park with another, much less famous, rock formation: Kata Tjuta, also known as The Olgas. In 2016, I only posted one picture, taken from a distance and promised more pictures later. (I suppose ten years counts as “later.”)

I also said that Kata Tjuta, unlike Uluru, was much more interesting from a distance, but I may just have been suffering from heatstroke, or exhaustion from swatting several million flies, because while I'm not sure that “interesting” is the best adjective for these deeply strange geologic blobs, they were definitely worth taking a good look at.

Flashback: Kangaroos

Finishing up my trip down Outback Memory Lane with some kangaroos from the sanctuary in Alice Springs.

Flashback: Standley Chasm

Many of the remaining pictures from the outback are landscapes of red sand with rocks and a few unhappy trees, and I think you get the idea without having to actually see them.

But I liked these pictures from Standley Chasm, near Alice Springs, because of how green and (deceptively) cool the landscape appears. You still needed a face net for the flies.

Flashback: Uluru–Just to be clear

This is Uluru: rounded top, steep sides.

(↓) That is not Uluru. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Flashback: Fooluru

 

That's obviously not Uluru—the shape is all wrong—but if you've been driving through the desert from Alice Springs for four hours and you see that big rocky shape in the distance, you could be forgiven for getting a little excited. I did!

But that's Mount Connor, also known as Fooluru.

Flashback: Uluru up close and from a distance

The path to the monolith from the Visitor Center, and the view at sunset. It's fascinating how all of the curves and complications at the base are invisible from a distance. It just looks like a big, pretty rock.

Flashback: Climbing Uluru

Humans love to climb things; sometimes the stupider and more dangerous an activity is, the longer the line of idiots clamouring to try it will be. Climbing Uluru has always been very dangerous; at least 35 people have died attempting it. (An ironic side note: Lindy Chamberlain, the woman who was convicted of murder after her baby daughter was killed by a dingo at Uluru, was finally exonerated after a climber fell to his death there and searchers looking for his body discovered the baby's jacket near some dingo dens.)

But in addition to being dangerous—and the fact that there's really nothing to see from up there except flat, mostly featureless outback in every direction—climbing Uluru was also disrepectful to the owners, the Aṉangu people, to whom it is sacred. They requested for decades that visitors respect their traditions by not climbing (and also not leaving their garbage and shit at the summit if they did) but it wasn't actually forbidden until 2019.

In 2016 people were still climbing, and if you look closely at the picture on the left you can see a few of them. The picture on the right zooms in on a few climbers taking a break, sitting on that hot, sun-baked rock. Definitely not my idea of a good time.

Flashback: Uluru flora

There had been an unusual amount of rain the year I was there, so it's possible that you wouldn't always see these flowers and grasses among the sandstone.

Flashback: And still more Uluru

Flashback: More Uluru

There are rock paintings—some of them 30,000 years old—around the base of the monolith.

Flashback: Uluru

I remembered Uluru, of course I did. I remembered drinking champagne while watching the colors change at sunset, and a different tour group accusing me of having stolen one of their folding chairs. I remembered that it was very, very hot. I remembered the beautiful waterhole, how magical it felt finding water in that dry, dry country.

And the flies. I definitely remembered the flies, and the nets we wore so they weren't crawling directly on our faces.

But I'd forgotten all the curves and undulations of the rock formations when you get up close, so that what looks like a sandstone cake with drippy icing from a distance is so much more complicated and beautiful than you expected.

Flashback: Sydney

Another Australia picture from 2016.

I'm not sure what this is a picture of—just kidding! I originally posted another image from farther away on the footpath under the Harbour Bridge. That one had some interesting shadows, but the closeup is definitely worth sharing, too!

Sunday bird blogging

I was looking for something else and stumbled across a few hundred unprocessed pictures from Australia ten years ago, including this pretty pigeon in Cairns: a Torresian imperial pigeon, aka Australian pied imperial pigeon.

Travel flashback

As an apology for missing Saturday Reflections, here's an example of some fun architectural geometries, and a few reflections, in the Central Business District in Sydney in 2016.