Uluru in the heart of Australia is the world's largest single rock. It was better known as Ayers Rock until its Aboriginal name, Uluru, became more popular.
While Uluru and Alice Springs are often linked together, they are in fact more than 450 kilometres apart. Yet one hardly visits one without visiting the other.
Uluru is 348 metres high, 3.6 kilometres long, 1.9 kilometres wide, and is 9.4 kilometres around. It is the largest single rock in the world.
Visitors converge before sundown on the Uluru Sunset Viewing Area which provides a magnificent spectacle of the rock monolith as it shifts hues with the dying of the day, turning into brilliant red just before the sun vanishes and plunges the desert into night. There is an Uluru Sunrise Viewing Area on the other side of Uluru.
Thirteen gorgeous gorges make up the major attraction of Katherine Gorge some 340 kilometres southeast of Darwin, capital of Australia's Northern Territory.
This is rugged Outback country with deep rainforests, rocky cliffs and escarpments, and the water habitat of unique birds and animals, with here and there the slither of a freshwater crocodile.
One hundred kilometres of walking tracks bring the visitor face to face with Nature in some of her wildest moods.
One of Australia's Northern Territory national parks, Katherine Gorge is the heart of Nitmiluk national park which is south of (and smaller than) Kakadu but larger than Litchfield which is close to the towns of Batchelor and Rum Jungle and closer to Darwin.
Environment
Australia is a vast island continent situated south of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The world's sixth largest country, Australia measures some 4000 km east to west and 3200 km north to south. Much of the interior of the country is flat, barren and extremely sparsely populated. The bulk of the population lives on the narrow, fertile eastern coastal plain and on the southeastern coast. The continent-long Great Dividing Range runs north-south down the eastern seaboard, separating the coastal plain from the drier inland areas. The Great Barrier Reef lies between 50-300 km offshore and extends 2000 km from the Torres Strait to Gladstone.
Australia is blessed with a fascinating mix of native flora and fauna. Its distinctive plants include the ubiquitous gum tree or eucalypt, of which there are some 700 species. Other common plants are wattle, banksia, waratahs, bottlebrushes, paperbarks and tea trees. Endemic animals include the iconic kangaroo, koala and emu, and the platypus, echidna, possum, wombat and dingo. There are also a number of interesting birds, such as parrots, cockatoos and kookaburras. Fauna to be wary of include Australian spiders (especially the redback and funnel-web), snakes (notably the venomous brown, tiger, death adder, copperhead and red-bellied black varieties) and bothsalt and freshwater crocodiles. There are more than 500 national parks,incorporating rainforests, deserts, mountain ranges and coastal dunes.
Australian seasons are the antithesis of those in Europe and North America: summer starts in December, autumn in March, winter in June and spring in September. Seasonal variations are not extreme and it's rare for temperatures to drop below zero on the mainland except in the mountains. As you head north, the seasonal variations become even less distinct. Darwin, in the far north, is in the monsoon belt, where there are just two seasons: hotand wet, and hot and dry.
The southern states are popular during the summer months, but the best time to visit is probably the shoulder seasons of spring or autumn when the weather in the south is mild, Queensland is still warm, the humidity is not too draining in the north and there are less flies in the bush. Spring in the outback can be spectacular if rains encourage wildflowers.
| < Zurück | Weiter > |
|---|
