30 Days of Photography - Day 15

Happy Australia Day, kids! I've celebrated by going for a bush walk, complete with a mob of kangaroos, and will shortly be having barbequed lamb for dinner! #giantstereotype #onlynotquitesoboganasmostofthestereotypes #stupidlylonghashtags

Ahem. The theme for Day 15 of the challenge was 'silhouette'. I've been trying for about a week now to take some silhouette photos, and have failed miserably every single time. So I'm abandoning ship and delving into the archives again, otherwise I'll never get this bloody challenge finished!

So, in honour of Australia Day, have a silhouette photo of Uluru and Kata Tjuta that I took in 2010.

K xx

Movie Monday: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

This Thursday is Australia Day, which marks the arrival of the First Fleet to Botany Bay in 1788. And so in honour of all things Australian, I decided that this week's movie would be one of my two all-time favourite Australian movies:

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Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Between this and Muriel's Wedding, 1994 was a pretty awesome year for the Australian film industry!! I love this movie. It's so ridiculously over-the-top. And despite quite often being total douchebags, the characters still manage to be lovable.

Reasons why Priscilla is totally awesome:
1. Guy Pearce. If for no other reason, you have to watch this movie for Guy Pearce. He's completely amazing. And a very convincing drag queen!

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2. It won an Oscar.
3. Hugo Weaving. He's Elrond, Agent Smith, and the voice of Megatron. Basically, he's a badass. And brilliant in this.

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4. It spawned a Broadway musical.
5. Bill Hunter. Apparently he was filming this and Muriel's Wedding at the same time. And he's awesome in both of them.
6. Hugo Weaving trying to repair the bus with face cream.
7. Terence Stamp.
8. The scenery. Especially Kings Canyon.

9. The scene walking down the street in Broken Hill.
10. The flashback to Hugo Weaving's wedding.
11. The little songs Guy Pearce sings.
12. The random woman who's running across Australia for charity and who keeps popping up randomly along their trip.
13. Terence Stamp waking up with a cake as a pillow.
14. The completely bonkers wigs and outfits they wear while doing "I Will Survive".
15. The Mamma Mia routine.
16. The fact that it can be such a hilarious movie while simultaneously dealing with incredibly serious issues.
17. Guy Pearce lip syncing to opera sitting in a giant silver shoe on top of a bus in the middle of the desert.

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Plus, the following quotes:
- "I hereby christen this budget Barbie camper... Priscilla: Queen of the Desert!"
- "Great. That's just what this country needs. A cock in a frock on a rock."
- [regarding sausages] "How do you like your little boys, girls?"
- [to a bogan woman in the Broken Hill pub] "Now listen here, you mullet. Why don't you just light your tampon and blow your box apart? Because it's the only bang you're going to get!"
- "Oh, Felicia. Where the fuck are we?"
- "What are you telling me? This is an ABBA turd???"
- "Is it true when you were born, the doctor turned around and slapped your mother?"
- "What a nice dog. What's its name?" "Herpes. If she's good, she'll heel."
- "Oh, you CAN'T do that with a ping-pong ball!" "Do you wanna bet?"
- "If you don't mind me asking, what kind of cabaret act do you do?" "We dress up in women's clothes and parade around mouthing the words to other people's songs."
- "Do you know why this microphone has such a long cord?" "Why?" "So it's easily retrieved after I shove it up your arse!"
- "[sings] A desert holiday, let's pack the drag away! You pack the lunch and tea, I'll pack the ecstacy. Fuck off you silly queer, I'm getting out of here. A desert holiday, hip hip hip HIP hooray!"

Here's to patriotism at its most ridiculous!

Has anyone seen the stage show as well as the movie? How do they compare?

K xx

Small Snapshots: Patriotism

Whee, Small Snapshots time again!! :D

Apparently I completely vagued on the theme for this week, so didn't take any new photos for this week. Whoops. Although considering it's been raining since Sunday, I doubt I would have gotten any decent photos anyway!! 

The theme this week was patriotism - appropriate, given it was Canada Day on July 1st, and Independence Day on July 4th. Considering Australia Day is in January, there's not much of a connection there. BUT July 1st was Dorothea McKellar's birthday, and you can't get much more patriotic than My Country! 

In case you haven't been exposed to it a million times since childhood, Dorothea McKellar wrote a poem called My Country in 1904 when she was in London and homesick. The second stanza has become ridiculously famous in Australia:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains
Of ragged mountain-ranges
Of drought, and flooding rains
I love her far horizons
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me. 

Anyway, I figured I'd dig through the archives for some stuff that could fit with McKellar's work.

I love a sunburnt country - Parliament House, Canberra

A land of sweeping plains - Uluru and Kata Tjuta, Northern Territory

Of ragged mountain ranges - Cradle Mountain, Tasmania

Of drought, and flooding rains - Kings Canyon, Northern Territory

I love her far horizons - Uluru, Northern Territory

I love her jewel-sea - Sullivan Bay, Victoria

Her beauty... - Opera House, Sydney

...and her terror - Freshwater crocodile, Healesville Sanctuary, Victoria

The wide brown land for me - Portland, Victoria

Want to join in? Head over to Kissed a Frog and link up!

K xx

Central Australia Part 3 - Kata Tjuta

Yeah, yeah. I'm a slacker, I know. Let's get into part 3 of the saga. So we left Uluru at like 8.45am, which was an incredibly depressing realisation. Nothing like having walked ten ks by that time of day to make you feel exhausted! So from Uluru, we headed down the road to Kata Tjuta, or The Olgas. And while we were on the way, we got hit with the most godawful collection of songs. Yes, our tour leader decided that we needed exposure to some "classic Aussie hits"...

The list of doom included 'Pub with No Beer', 'G'day G'day', and the obligatory 'Down Under'. But as the list went on, it got progressively worse. We moved from "classic Aussie hits" to "crap they teach you in primary school" - when we hit 'Click Go the Shears' followed by 'Bound for Botany Bay', I was about ready to jump out of the bus window. Thankfully, we got to Kata Tjuta, and the torture stopped.

When we got there, it was time for yet another walk. *sigh* This time, it was into Walpa Gorge.

The start of the walk looked quite a lot like it belonged in Jordan or somewhere similar, in my opinion!

Sara, as you can see, was thrilled by our second walk of the day:

As we got further into the gorge, it became less like something that had escaped from the Middle East:

This bit was pretty cool - more of the black algae that grows where water runs during the rains:

And here's the end of the gorge. Honestly, while it was impressive and all, it was rather a let-down after having spent two hours walking around Uluru!

The view back towards the plain below wasn't too shabby:

It was pretty nice to see the sky this blue though after the previous day of epic rainingness:

On the way back to Uluru for lunch, we stopped off at a viewing platform where you can see the whole of Kata Tjuta from the one site, which is FAR more impressive than the view you get from up close:

And off to the right, you can see clear across to Uluru:

After a quick stop there to take photos, it was back to the campsite at Uluru for lunch. And from there, it was a sad and dull four or five hour drive back to Alice Springs. Good Lord, but it was long and painful... Although I suppose it can't really be avoided!

Anyway, Kata Tjuta is spectacular, but unlike Uluru, loses some of its impressiveness the closer you get to it. But from a distance? Totally worth the gazillions of hours of driving!

K xx

Central Australia Part 2 - Uluru

So like I said at the end of my epic Kings Canyon post, we got to stop on the side of the road, run up a massive sand dune, and see the sun set over Uluru and Kata Tjuta. That's Kata Tjuta on the right, incidentally!

It was pretty damned impressive, I have to say.

Sara managed to get a couple of silhouette shots. I wasn't brave enough to mess around with my shutter speed without having a tripod to rely on!

From there, it was another 45 minutes in the bus to the campsite (permanent tents with actual beds in them - my kind of camping!). After a dinner of steak, roo steak, and camel sausages and a quick shower (nothing like showering with a massive grasshopper to make you rush...), it was off to bed after what seemed like the longest day ever. To be honest, the next day wasn't a whole lot shorter. We were woken up at 3.45, and breakfast was on the table until 4.30. Nothing like a nice bowl of Coco Pops in the middle of the night! :S

I will say one thing for getting up at stupid o'clock: the stars were TOTALLY worth it. I've not seen stars like that since the Inca Trail! Aaaanyway, we left camp at 4.45. It was a 45-odd minute drive from camp to the other side of Uluru where you can see the sun rise hitting the rock. On the plus side, it wasn't raining, which made a nice improvement on the previous day!

Anyway, sunrise was at around 5.45. We staked out a good spot, tried not to freeze to death, and stood around waiting...

Gradually, the sun began to come up, and the rock started to change colour from a grey colour to brown:

To red:

And then finally, FINALLY, the sun crested the hill:

And once that happened, the rock turned orange:

Once sunrise was over, we piled back into the bus, and headed around to the start of the base walk. I was slightly horrified when I realised that it was only 6.30 in the morning, that we'd been up for nearly 3 hours, and that we were about to walk 9.4km in two hours... :S

The walk around the base is incredibly worth the effort. At 6.30 in the morning, it was still relatively cool - you'd be nuts to try and do it in the middle of the day! - which meant it was fairly easy going for the most part. It's only when walking around the base that you can see Uluru for what it really is - enormous and ridiculously varied.

Does this look like an alien skull to anyone else???

The edges of the rock are so defined against the sky that a lot of the time, it looks like it's been photoshopped into the landscape.

The lines on the rock are actually stratigraphic layers - Uluru is actually a slab of sandstone bedrock that was pushed up during a mountain building period in the Palaeozoic era millions of years ago. That's pretty freaking cool, especially when you realise that there's another 2km of Uluru below the surface...

The black lines on the rock are a type of algae, and indicate where water's flowed during rain. Apparently Uluru is pretty bloody incredible in the rain, but frankly, I'm glad we didn't have to experience it!

It really is the most amazingly changeable scenery...

This bit, for instance, looked like a whale:

While this bit was just bizarre and amazing:

This is one of my favourite photos from the walk:

This is the waterhole inside Uluru - it's sheltered from the outside, and we got to see it when the water level was really high from all the rain in recent months!

Just around the corner from the waterhole was this rock art. It's amazing how different Central Australian rock art is from the rock art further north in Kakadu... Although apparently it serves a completely different purpose, so I suppose it's not all *that* surprising.

This bit was just cool. I really wanted to know if there was a little waterhole up over that lip:

And this ridge? This is where the climb is. God knows why the hell you'd think climbing it was a good idea...

Especially when you see this. This is the chain. Or, more accurately, the first THIRD of the chain, which is all you can see from the ground.

You still have to get up several more ridges to reach the top. Not only is it incredibly disrespectful to the local Aboriginal people to climb, but something like half of all people who climb the rock use the top as a bathroom. That's just wrong. Not to mention the fact that the strong winds at the top can actually knock you right off the side of the rock! Thank God the climb looks like it's going to be closed permanently sometime in the next twelve months...

We finished the walk at around 8.30 (which, frighteningly, was deemed morning tea time!), and drove to a lookout to get some photos of the whole of Uluru:

From there, it was a 45 minute drive out to Kata Tjuta. But that's a story for another time. A painful, painful story, filled with the cheesiest, worst Australian music imaginable... Isn't that something to look forward to?? ;)

K xx