We all have a bucket list of things to say and do before we go to our Maker.
Mine included a visit to the centre of Australia, the world’s most arid country, with 70 per cent of the land being arid.
The “red centre” is apparent in daylight, the soil everywhere is red.
Fine, almost dust like sand, on a swag, (bush bed) in your sleeping bag, lying around the campfire, ground hardly forgiving!
But wrapped in my sleeping bag, -2 degree under a half moon sky and the most enormous carpet of stars, it was a vista to be endured, and enjoyed!
Thirteen international and Australian tourists visiting the huge rock monolith Uluru, of enormous significance to the indigenous aboriginal people, for millennia.
There stories, thousands of years, passed from father to son, of the spirit gods.
Uluru means “meeting place”.
It is higher than the Eiffel Tower and changes colour as the sun rises and sets, a view seen each day by thousands of tourists and locals.
Aboriginal elders say climbing the Rock, is an abhorrence, disrespecting aboriginal significance.
Moreover, 35 people have died doing so, impacting on spiritual beliefs and spirit surroundings.
Most people respect aboriginal beliefs in all surrounding national parks, all on aboriginal land.
Australia is the land, tyrannised by distance. Vast distances for providing power, water, communications, education to the people. Often no mobile phone service ( I can see Bahrainis shudder).
Vast cattle stations, with one we visited larger in size than the whole of Belgium.
In these parts, men and women are hardy, born to isolation great distance to facilities and life we take for granted, in cities.
Alice Springs, the regional centre, naturally abounds with aboriginals.
While there are a lot of aboriginals who have become lawyers, doctors, professors, there is still a huge gulf between the lifestyle, living conditions of most other Australians and many aboriginal people.
In all Australian prisons, 65pc are aboriginal. Many guilty of misdemeanours should not be incarcerated, but that requires a huge educative programme, over vast distances, to help provide facilities, teachers and doctors for the region.
Much medical assistance is by Flying Doctors Service, ferrying hospital cases to major regional hospitals and capital city hospitals. It is an expensive and onerous task, organisationally and costly.
Despite many campaigns of “closing the gap” and dealing with the “stolen generation” of aboriginal children, taken from their mothers, to be raised by missionaries and white Australians, the gap has hardly narrowed.
In places like Alice Springs, you see the enormity of the task.
Business claims a desire to employ aboriginals, but found many, while willing, often went “walkabout,” as befits cultural traditions, so shops were reluctant to employ them due to “unreliability.”
Lots of small groups of hoodies mingling around in the parks and along the streets.
Not threatening, just that they were people who could be working.
The only beggar I saw was an African.
Surprising to see mainly Asian staff in hotels and restaurants, even isolated roadhouses. As in Bahrain, surely such jobs should go to locals.