WHAT’S THE OUTBACK?
The Outback is two million square miles of wilderness in the interior of Australia, more empty than anything you can probably imagine.   It’s the only place on earth where people live in underground caves to escape the heat of summer.    The temperature can hover above 125 degrees for months on end, and a person can die of thirst within hours. Australia has a railroad track that runs for 300 miles in an absolutely straight line. Its called the "long straight". Its is part of the Indian-Pacific railroad that runs from Perth to Sydney.          The Indian-Pacific railway is the longest railway line in the world. It runs for over 3000 miles from the Indian Ocean in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east.    

WHAT’S A ‘STATION’?

A station is a tract of land in the outback, similar to what we call ‘ranches’ in the USA. Cattle and sheep graze on these huge tracts of land,  		  some of which occupy more land than some countries. 

Helicopters and small planes are usually used to round up sheep and cattle and to check dingo and rabbit fences.  

 
A person who rounds up stock is called a Stockman.  A person who works at a Station is called a Stationhand.  The owner is called a Station-Manager.

WHAT SORT OF LIFESTYLE DO PEOPLE HAVE IN THE OUTBACK?
The vast distances have forced people to adapt to their isolation (some people being more than a day's drive from their nearest neighbor). A two-way radio and an airstrip are vital to any outback station.    Because of the great distances some children in the outback cannot attend regular school. They learn from the School of the Air which is a special school where the teacher  and student interact via a two-way radio.  
The Royal Flying Doctor Service operates a fleet of airplanes outfitted as flying ambulances and clinics. They visit these remote locations to provide medical services. They also provides advice over the two-way radio.  

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE UNUSUAL THINGS YOU CAN SEE IN THE OUTBACK?

ULURU
This is a huge rock (called a monolith) that sticks out in the middle of the flat desert. From a distance it looks like an impregnable fortress built eons ago by some mythical warlord.

Uluru is over six miles around and over one thousand feet high. It is believed to be about  600 million years old and was once part of a huge mountain range. The mountain range has long since disappeared, eroded away by rain and wind.  With each passing hour as the sun moves across the sky the rock changes color - changing from delicate mauve, blues, pinks, browns to fiery red.  It is a sacred place to the Pitjanjara Aboriginal tribe.                         

 

  
DEVILS MARBLES
These massive boulders are scattered along the Stuart Highway near Alice Springs. They glow red in the sunset. Aborigines believe they were left by the Rainbow Serpent of the Dreamtime.    
                         
 
WAVE ROCK
A huge granite rock that looks like a wave, frozen in time and turned into stone. It has been made this way by the wind and rain water running down its sides.                          


THE OLGAS

Enormous domes of red rock located about 20 miles from Uluru. You can walk into valleys and gorges between the 36 rock domes and feel the eerie mystery around you. The Aborigines call it 'Kata Tjuta'. It has great spiritual significance to them.  

 

  
KATHERINE ROCK
One of 13 gorges in Nitmiluk National Park. They began forming about 23 million years ago as torrents of water flowing through tiny cracks in the earth slowly eroded away the earth and rock creating these huge gorges.  It is rich in Aboriginal art, with rock paintings representing the spiritual 'dreaming' of the Jawoyn people, the traditional owners of the land.

Apart from boat rides through the Gorge, with its sheer towering walls, there are also over 100 kilometers of walking tracks and numerous aboriginal rock paintings to visit.                             

 

 
LINKS:
http://www.axionspatial.com/~atlas/countries/14_frm.html      (Interactive Map)