More rocks, camels and stuff

Up early this morning and jumped on the Ranger guided tour of the Mala walk. Listening to the explanation of how the rock was formed and the part that it has played in the lives of the Aborigines brought a new insight into this fascination culture, a world away from ours. She explained about the Song-line and how the story starts way up north and ends way down south, the only way to hear all parts of the story is to be in the place where that pat of the story takes place. Even if you knew the other parts of the story, you are forbidden from relating it anywhere but where it belongs. Then there is the small complication that you only know the story as it is told to a person of your particular ‘level’ within the aboriginal life. Until you reach the next level through initiation, you will never know anymore of the story than you already know. What is sad is that the elders that know it all are just not able to tell anyone else so it can’t readily be written down and dispersed to the uninitiated, including non-aboriginals. We will only ever know the basic story.  Then as we move around the rock the story unfolds and we see more of the ‘need to know’ law as we pass sacred sites, some where sacred men’s business and some with sacred women’s business takes place. Truly fascinating.

Just for fun we took the Taste of Camel Riding tour where for a few sheckles you get a bit of old chat about camels and a even shorter ride. Enough to convince us that we probably don’t want to take the 2 hour tour!

Went back to Kata Tjuta to do the Valley of the Winds walk but were quite disappointed as we could only do a short part, then it gets way to hard and long, so we retired for the day. 

Snap de jour

Here we are, test driving the camels