Day 27 – King’s Canyon and Alice Spring

Another day hiking in one of the most impressive scenery of Australia: King’s Canyon. We all climbed a fairly steep rock to gradually find ourselves on the top of a huge irregular Canyon. The rocks are amongst the oldest of the planet, with their formation dated back to millions of years. The nature is powerful here, and despite the absence of strong vegetation, the small creeks and rivers are surrounded by a lively ecosystem of plants and animals.

The tour lasted approx three and half hours; immediately after lunch we finally drove to our last destination: Alice Springs.

The funniest moment of the day if not of the entire week, was the Melon Bowling. We stopped on the way to collect some wild melons of approximately small pineapple size. With the bus going full speed, you are supposed to launch them outside the window to hit the street signals-triangles on the side of the street! It was so funny. I managed to score 4 times, with 2 of them practically with my full body outside the bus!

Once in Alice, we all checked in at the same hostel and we went for dinner. We then stopped in a bar where a local band was playing folk music with violin, bass and guitar. It was fabulous music and I decided to join the singers in a very improbable local dance. I felt a real cowboy without a horse...

 I would like to spend few words for the aboriginals. I am far from being an expert in the matter but I couldn’t stop thinking about their condition.  As far as I have seen they practically seem to have lost ‘their past’ and at the same time not belonging to ‘this present’. It often feels like they are in ‘no men’s land’ in their own native land. Poor life conditions together with some congenital deficiencies for modern food, make look many of them (obviously not all) the ghosts of their own souls. I could actually notice many parallelisms with the so called ‘red skin’ in US when I lived there and visited their towns in the mid-west. I was told that, despite many efforts from the Australian governments, the situation remains, in many circumstances, extremely difficult. I really wish this problem could one day be somehow resolved for the good of everybody.