7 November 2011 - Ayres Rock Camping Ground, Yulara Resort, Northern Territory

The day is not yet done, but there is opportunity to put fingers to keyboard and describe what has so far been an excellent day here in the Red Centre. Yes, today we can call it the Red Centre, because there have been all the elements that make it such.

Sunrise at Uluru

The alarm went off bright and early, before the birds and we were breakfasted and on the road by 5.30 am. Dawn was upon us already and we feared we would be late to see the sun shine its first rays upon the face of the Rock. At the entrance of the National Park, we had to wait behind foreigners in a camper van who required much explanation regarding their three day pass. Then it was our turn; $50 paid in return for little cards with our names and date thereon. Exceeding the speed limit all the way, we finally reached Talinguru Nyakunytjaka, the viewing area, to find there were about one thousand people ahead of us.

The crowds moved as if on pilgrimage to the area at the top and waited with cameras at the ready. Certainly it was lovely, but we had expected greater colour change as day light grew. Then as a pack, we all descended the knoll to the cars and coaches in the parking areas.

On the road to Kata Tjutu

We high tailed it back around to the west side of Uluru and then drove out to the Olgas, Kata Tjuta (which means “many heads” in the local language). Kata Tjuta is really far more beautiful than Uluru, but not as celebrated. This group of thirty six large domed rock formations cover an area of over twenty one square kilometres and are composed of  conglomerate; sedimentary rock consisting of cobbles and boulders cemented together with sandstone. The highest of these, Mt Olga, stands 1,066 metres above sea level, or about 546 metres above the surrounding plain.

The Olgas, now Kata Tjutu

Chris had been there before, but only briefly. He remembered a straight road from Ayres Rock to the Olgas, but now the well maintained sealed road takes a southerly sweep, making the trip much longer and taking one further away from the sight. Chris reckons the designer must have been in cahoots with the roading contractor who made the relatively new road and must have been paid by the metre, hence the extending of the road; all very wasteful of public money. Along this same road, there is an excellent viewing point from the top of one of the red sand dunes. Expensive board walks and even more impressive platforms have been built at huge cost to the tax payer. “Why could they not have simply made a gravel area on the side of the road where there was a clear view”, Chris asked.

In fact Chris, in his curmudgeonly way ,was most upset with the bureaucratic process at the National Park entrance, the manicured car parks and walkways, and generally the fact that everything was so very different from when he had visited so many years ago.

Wandering through the Valley of the Winds

From another of these excellent car parks at Kata Tjuta, we set out on the Valley of the Winds walk, a 7.4 kilometre circuit through the mountains, which would take us four hours. It was already 7.30 am and the day was heating up. But like the wonderful walk around the Kings Canyon rim, this was also a must do. The scenery was just wonderful. Certainly much of the walk was over rough terrain, and steep in places, but we entered gullies full of trees and scrub, watered by clear running streams, saw birds and black footed wallabies, and dozens of other hikers. And most of all, the sky was blue! So the red rock sides of these mountains were beautifully contrasted and I saw the special beauty that the Red Centre is renowned for.

The walk took us two and a quarter hours, and three bottles of water. Returning to the car park, not yet foot sore, we decided to eat half our lunch then drive around the other side to do the Walpa Gorge Walk, a much less strenuous 2.6 kilometre walk of just one hour’s duration. The path took us over bare rock faces, polished by the thousands of foreign feet who had passed over them before us, and up to a lookout short of the end of the canyon. It was impressive, in fact quite awesome to be between the steep pockmarked sides of the gorge, but not as impressive as the walk we had done earlier in the day.

The Walpa Gorge

Driving the forty five kilometres back to the road to Uluru, we passed a road killed King Brown or Mulga Snake on the road. Chris was pleased to find this, not the fact that this large snake, a cousin to that I met on the cotton farm earlier in the year, was dead, but evidence that there were snakes still about. He had told me that when he had travelled through this area before, there were dead snakes on the road everywhere and we were curious as to why this was no longer the case. In fact the dilemma of outback snakes had occupied our conversation quite often, but is not likely to in the future, or at least in such a concerned manner.

We also drew to a halt when we spotted four feral camels close to the roadside. They were a little mangy looking (probably only moulting) and at first, quite interested in us, but once we revved the engine to drive on, they bolted.

A camel looking out for tourists

By this time we had also realised that it was 7 November, and the forty first anniversary of Chris’s original arrival in Australia. We had actually been here in Australia just one year ago when we popped over to purchase the landcruiser and caravan, and celebrated the fortieth in some modest fashion. And so what with the anniversary, blue skies, camels, squashed snakes, there was no call for glum moods. The day was definitely a celebration!

Filling the diesel tank at the one and only service station at just $1.85 a litre put the icing on the cake, and on that note we returned to camp, booked a further day, leaving an option to take up a fourth free day should we so desire, and settled in for a quiet afternoon out of the sun but still enjoying the warm 37 degree heat.