Dreamtime Country

In this part of the country you'll see Ghost Gums, with their gleaming white trunks; with any luck, a parrot, like some feathered rainbow, will scream at you from the branches and high in the sky, a wedge-tailed eagle will swoop, in lazy circles, looking for a tasty tidbit

The vibrant colours of the Australian Outback

Years ago, when I was living in Melbourne, I came to know a genial character who was known as Bill "Nugget" Morton. A chunky, balding man in his sixties, Morton was a spinner of yarns, a teller of tales. Back before the First World War, he'd ridden his bicycle from the city up into the Dreamtime country, Australia's strikingly beautiful outback. After a thousand miles of hard riding through the heat and dust, Nugget arrived in the outback's unofficial capital, Alice Springs. He worked for a few years riding with cattle along spinifex trails, putting his savings ultimately into his own spread, building himself a wattle daub homestead and importing a city girl for his bride. His life was one long adventure - and after making a fortune in cattle and minerals, he left the land he loved to retire in greater comfort in the big city.

In those faraway days, the outback was peopled with characters like Nugget, most of whom would drift in and out of the Alice to take on supplies, booze it up and then disappear for another year. The place was, until a few years ago, little more than a shanty town, with a main street, a couple of pubs, some stores, a police station (with black trackers on constant call), some camels wandering about, the Flying Doctor Service and a railway terminal. Underground water sustained the town and made it green, an oasis of sorts in a parched environment. Scattered amongst the trees were the houses of the folk who lived there - railway men, mostly, police, the doctor, government workers, shopkeepers. The town was a tiny flyspeck in a vast sea of spinifex, a green garden in the red centre. Its few visitors didn't linger too long, because there was nothing much to do. I couldn't help but reflect, as we approached Alice Springs after a smooth jetflight from the south, that old Nugget wouldn't know the place today.

Budgerigars nest close to Alice Springs

Alice Springs today is a thriving town of neat homes on tree-lined streets, contemporary air-conditioned hotels and motels, restaurants, galleries selling aboriginal bark paintings and boutiques catering to the tourist with a variety of Australiana. And recently, a train dubbed the Ghan made an appearance, to provide travelers in these parts with a lazy and very luxe way to travel, away from the heat and dust. But the place is more than that; it is your stepping-off point to the wonders of the Dreamtime Country. The traveller who has eaten his fill of Sydney's luscious rock oysters, who has surfed at Palm Beach, cuddled a koala, seen Aida at the opera house, might well ask: okay, how can I top this? The answer lies to the north and to the west, in Australia's last great frontier. There's beauty here to equal Sydney's thrusting skyline and its brilliant blue water - and it's much easier to get here than it was in Nugget's time. Today, a jet will get you there in a few relaxed hours. Once you've arrived, prepare yourself for sights the like of which you have never seen before.

Alice Springs today; the Ghan leaves the Alice for Darwin

You can make your way to Australia's Dreamtime Country (the aboriginals call their past the Dreamtime and recall it through tribal dancing and ritual and in paintings left long ago on the walls of caves) on your own, or with a tour group. If you're travelling alone, book well in advance. If you take the package tour, one trip you'll make is to Ayers Rock. You'll fly from the Alice in a small plane via the Macdonnell Ranges, which sweep in a boomerang arc, east and west of the town. Originally around fifteen thousand feet high, the ranges have been eroded over millions of years and deep gorges have been cut by rivers long since gone. The highest peak in the range is 5,000 feet high. There are spectacular red-walled gorges here (you'll visit one later) but, for the moment, you'll admire it from the air as you wing your way towards an even more remarkable sight, Ayers Rock.

Uluru

Ayers Rock, or Uluru, as the native Australians call it, looks like a large orange pebble as you approach it now; it is, in fact, the rounded sandstone tip of a huge sandstone "iceberg" which sleeps silent under the red earth. As impressive as it is from the air, it really must be seen from the ground, for, chameleon-like, it changes colour - dark crimson at sunrise, variously pink, purple and brown during the day and crimson again as the sun sets. After your plane lands, you'll explore this monolith, from the caves at its base, with their Aboriginal paintings, to the rounded summit, fourteen hundred feet up. Along the way, your guide will point out the natives' sacred places, used once for secret rituals and now abandoned, remembered only by the oldest men in the tribes. There are many sacred totem places scattered throughout the centre and the north, and time was when a stranger encamped on or near them at his peril. I remember Nugget telling me of the night he camped, in all innocence, on such a sacred place. During the night, a dozen warriors crept up to his camp; he escaped with a head wound from a nulla nulla (an aboriginal club) and thereafter carried on his skull a hole the size of a quarter as a souvenir of the occasion.

From the summit of Ayers Rock, you get a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside-and you'll see a pale mauve jumble of boulders in the distance. This odd range is Mt Olga. If you half close your eyes, you'll swear you're looking at some strange Byzantine temple, its many domes shimmering in the sun.

The Olgas

Next day, you might like to visit a cattle station where, under the watchful gaze of an Aboriginal guide, you'll learn how to throw a boomerang, test your skill with a stock whip and, if you're so inclined, ride a horse along outback trails. While you're here, you'll get a taste of pioneer days, right down to Damper, the outback bread cooked in hot ashes.

Another trip you'll make is to the Macdonnell Ranges, which you saw earlier from the air. This time, you'll go by coach, for a closer look at the gorges which are a photographer's delight. Standley Chasm, the most famous, has walls 240 feet high and only 12 feet wide; when the noonday sun casts its shadows deep into the gorge, the walls turn blood red, vivid contrast to the sliver of blue above. In this part of the country you'll see Ghost Gums, with their gleaming white trunks; with any luck, a parrot, like some feathered rainbow, will scream at you from the branches and high in the sky, a wedge-tailed eagle will swoop, in lazy circles, looking for a tasty tidbit. Here, too, far from the sea, are tall palms which fringe Palm Valley waterholes- a sight almost as odd as the wild camels which roam much of the interior.

The Macdonnell Ranges; a Ghost Gum; wild camels; a saltwater croc lies in wait

Further adventures lie in store for the traveller who journeys north, from Alice Springs to Darwin, the outpost town on the country's far-north coast. You can fly there from the Alice, or from any major capital - or take the Ghan. Darwin, named for the scientist who visited these shores aboard the Beagle, rewards with an ambience that's straight out of a Somerset Maugham story. The place was hit by a hurricane some years ago and almost flattened, but with true Aussie spirit it quickly bounced back as vital and as offbeat as ever.

Flame Tree glows up north

The north country, with Darwin at its centre, has great herds of buffalo drinking at rivers which are alive with crocodiles. Once Nugget was crossing just such a river in a dinghy with his dog. A huge croc almost swamped the boat as it leapt out of the water to snatch the dog with its powerful jaws. You'll meet buffalo and crocodile hunters here, and, in all likelihood, Japanese pearl fishermen, Australian cattlemen and uranium miners, American rice growers, French nuns from Noumea, Chinese cooks and Aboriginals sitting in the shade of the flame trees. The new, rebuilt Darwin has something for everyone if you have the time and are looking for an experience out of the ordinary.