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.

Saturday reflections

The reflections are secondary maybe, but I liked this truck in camouflage colors I saw parked in the East Village last night.

More urban poetry

I really like this one—early evening, and the sunset reflected in snowmelt on Park Avenue.

Urban poetry

It doesn't get much more urban than this: Times Square on a winter's evening this past February.

I seldom carry a real camera around any more, and can't remember why I happened to have it with me that day. Maybe I thought I'd take something I could use in my class this semester—the theme was photography—but it took me three months to get around to looking at the pictures and classes ended last Saturday.