A game of marbles anyone?

2008-09-17 - Wednesday

What an awesome sleep under the stars! The moon was so bright, it casted moon shadows over the landscape. I wouldn't say it was my best sleep yet; but it was pretty close. In fact, the only stirring I did was when the winds picked up and I could feel a slight chill on my head...I should have worn my hat I suppose.

Our group was spread out into several little pockets of sleeping bags; and as such, as one got up it pretty much started a chain reaction. We were all up shortly after sunrise.

This morning, the plan is to head back into Alice Springs; do enough grocery shopping to last us a couple of days and give folks time to check emails, do some shopping.

While in Alice Springs we also checked out the School of Air. Because of the vastness of Australia's Northern Territory, there are small pockets of children in rather remote regions. In order to ensure these children receive a proper education, the Northern Territory School system created the School of Air back in 1955. Originally, lessons were sent to the children via the postal service. The children were also able to interact with their teacher via radio during certain times of the day...a virtual classroom spanning thousands of kilometers, if you will. In 2000, the system was upgraded to deliver it's programming via satellite Internet. While at the school we had witnessed an English class going on with about a dozen school children interacting via one way cameras, voice conferencing and a version of Internet Messenger.

As related by our tour guide, there's no doubt that the system works, as the children consistently score in the top 10 percentile of their National tests. Once the children reach their teen years, they continue their studies either through another form of distance education or through boarding schools.

After leaving Alice Springs, we continued along on Stuart Highway to a small park indicating the we were leaving the desert region of Australia and moving into the Tropics of Capricorn. From here on we can expect even warmer temperatures and higher humidity versus they dryness of the last couple of days. After a quick lunch it was back in the van for a 5 hour drive to the Devil's Marbles.

The Devil's Marbles is a pretty accurate description for the landscape before us. The land was strewn with random giant boulders as if the Gods had left a game of marbles part way thru. Apparenty the explanation for this is similar to the formation of Uluru. The homogeneous rock that forms these marbles just happened to be much harder than the surrounding rock. As the landscape eroded, the softer materials were carried away leaving these peculiar formations.

We arrived on site just in time to be dazzled by the setting sun. While not as impressive as the setting sun of Uluru, it was quite the sight nonetheless; especially when taken in from the top of one of these stray marbles.

After sunset, we navigated our way back down to solid ground and our first group began preparations for supper while a couple of others, myself included, experimented with trying to get some star pictures, primarily of the Southern Cross, Australia's National constellation.

This was our first of a couple of Bush camping nights; so our amenities were few...no running water (actually, no water - except what we brought in), no plumbed toilets (basically outhouses), no Barbie's to BBQ on...only our fire pit. Even so, our first cooking group did a great job of preparing Steak (Scottish cut) and Salad.

After another couple of hours around the fire pit, I just couldn't keep my eyes open any longer, so I grabbed my sleeping pad, sleeping bag and camera and headed up to spend the night on one of the more accessible marbles. I did my best to make my self believe it was no more different than sleeping in the top bunk of a bunkbed; however, I still wasn't interested in getting too close to the edge.

After about a half an hour, I was joined by another 5 of my Trek buddies...it's surprising how many sleeping bags you can fit on top of a giant marble.