Hayden and the Padens

Holy smokes! Claudia and I have just returned from quite the Outback adventure! We met up in Adelaide and had a lovely dinner at a Greek restaurant (I missed cheese so much!) and left early the next morning with Hayden, our aboriginal tour guide. Our first stop was at a camel farm where we embarked on a camel-back ride through a native pine forest. I spotted my first kangaroos and let out a yelp of excitement, Claudia simply shrugged. Turns out kangaroos are like deer in the wilderness over hear and they are a dime a dozen, though they never got less entertaining to watch hop away. We drove up into the outback and stayed two nights at a lovely eco-lodge outside of Wilpena. We spent the days bushwalking through the lovely mountain range, spotting crazy lizards, birds, kangaroos, emus and wallabies and hearing wonderful aboriginal stories explaining how the mountains and animals were created. We also had the wonderful opportunity to access aboriginal rock paintings and carvings that date back as far as 50,000 years ago, which is impossible for me to even fathom. It is quite sad because Hayden was only able to explain only the basic aspects of these painting sights despite the fact that they were painted by his own ancestors. The stories painted in these sights were only allowed to be known by initiated Aytanamatana people and the last initiated person died in 2003. They could not continue the initiation process because once the missionaries came in their people were punished for even speaking their native language. The terrible stories that we heard about the way the aboriginal people were treated by "white man" equate to the stories we may be lucky enough to read about in our history books regarding Native Americans, though these stories actually happened in our story tellers' lifetimes. The Australian Aboriginals did not receive equal rites here until 1967. This trip has made me question the enthusiasm that I expressed in regards to teaching English in Asia because so many bad things are associated with the English language and 'white man' entering into another populations' native land. This is something that I will have to think long and hard about before I set out to teach the rest of the world my native tongue… We had a really wonderful time with Hayden who was the perfect tour guide. He has led journalists from National Geographic on tours and has recently won a prize for having the best Aboriginal Tour company. Every afternoon he would pull out a table and chairs from the back of his car and set up a table in the middle of the outback for 'tea' where we would have the opportunity to sample native bush foods while sipping our tea or coffee. He had such a keen eye for wildlife and would actually grab the slower lizards that we encountered on the trail and allow us to hold and inspect them! Our last afternoon with him, we set up our tea in the late afternoon below a wall of rocks where a colony of yellow-footed rock wallabies are known to live. This is a variety of rock wallaby that was on the endangered species list just ten years ago. The people have managed to multiply the population of the animals by raising some in captivity and then breeding them with the wild wallabies and slowly reintroducing them back into the wild. While we sat under the rocks, we saw nearly fifty of the beautiful creatures emerge from within the rock wall and bounce their way down and across the way towards the nearby water hole. The kangaroos and wallabies hide in the shade all day long and only come out once the intense sun has resided to feed and drink—smart animals! Lord, this sun is intense—Claudia and I have acquired such a tan that you might not even call us pale any more! The outback is a very crazy place. Its strange how these animals only live in Australia. You are hiking along and a kangaroo hops out of the bush or as you drive emus race you on the road. Its getting late and I have yet to even touch on the most adventurous parts of our outback adventures… As soon as possible I will write again about "Uncle Rosco's Mystery Tour."