Lost Camel Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park

There is a reason that this part of Australia is also referred to as the Red Center (or Red Centre if you spell it like they do). Most of the earth around here is a beautiful red color. The Rock is all shades of red depending on the time of day and how the light is stricking it. Walking along paths, you are walking in red dust and sand. Needless to say, at some point, your shoes have lost their original color and become red shoes. My tennies are black but I haven't been able to tell that for...

Not a real big T shirt wearing person anymore. Used to be a time when that was about all I wore when I wasn't in work clothes. As such, I needed quite a few T shirts to rotate them, wear one appropriate for the activity, show off what I could do or where I had been, etc. etc. For awhile, we would purchase T shirts from just about everywhere we visited until we were so inundated with T shirts that there was no room in our clothes storage area for hardly anything else. I say clothes storage ar...

Since the Hand Back, things have changed around Ayers Rock. Let's go back a few years and visit what it used to be. When Ayers Rock was discovered and decided to be a great tourist attraction and thus a money earning prospective, the Traditional Owners or the Aboriginals were slowly pushed out of the area and could not take care of the land. They had been here for some 20 to 30,000 years and had done quite well in managing the land and taking care of the animals. But the white fellow thought...

There are maybe 5 or 6 different tour agencies that offer pretty much the same thing with just a few variations. Anangu Travel seems to be the only one that works with the Anangu tribe and has an Aboriginal on the tours and an interpreter. Discovery tours and Voyages offer smaller vehicles while AAT Kings and APT have the big buses. There are flights over the rocks and also helicopters that fly over. There are a couple of viewing sites that are free and you can walk to them as they are in th...

Had I visited Ayers Rock when it was still Ayers Rock and not Uluru, I would have climbed it with great enthusiasm and never thought anything else about it except to be proud of my accomplishment. I'm sure I would have accomplished it as well even though it is a hard climb. But time and money were against me and now I am here and the rock is now Uluru and back in the hands of the Traditional Owners, the Anangu. Uluru is a sacred and spiritual site for them. They don't climb and they would re...

A couple of our tours included spending time with Alwyn, an Anangu tribal member who is quite happy to share certain aspects of his culture with the "white fella" or the tourist. He speaks in his native tongue as this is how it must be taught. An interpreter goes along to translate. Alwyn speaks perfect English and understands it but traditionally, children learned from an elder and they learned in their own language so the tour goes in the traditional language. It was quite interesting to l...

Australia is famous for their animals and how many poisonous ones they have and how quickly they can kill you. Luckily you never see most of these animals unless you purposely seek them out in a zoo or reptile house. The outback has their own breed of "deadly" animals that won't kill you but will slowly drive you crazy. The blasted, bloody, infernal, leave me alone, go away from me, dang it fly. They are not big flies but there have got to be millions of them. They only want a sip of moistur...

Today was our designated rock day. As this is also our honeymoon, we had decreed that it was going to be relaxing, so none of that stupid sunrise at Uluru **** for us. It didn't occur to us that there were other reasons for the touristy enthusiasm for early rising in the desert, until we realised how hot it was outside. Still, Uluru is a touristy National Park, it will hardly be a trek in the desert. Not thinking about how they have to ship pretty much everything in, including water, to make ...

After our trip to Kings Canyon we headed back to Ayers Rock Resort to explore Ayers Rock and the Olgas. As I've mentioned before, the Voyages' Ayers Rock Resort is the only accommodation within at least an hour of the national park. It's quite the monopoly, but at least it's a lovely oasis in the middle of the outback. There are several hotel options within the resort, and Dave and I stayed at The Lost Camel. It was a fun and funky little hotel with the bed positioned in the center of the roo...

Well we left Port Douglas very reluctantly and flew to Uluru. Sleeping tablets definitly helping Ian on these journeys. The hotel is rather austere and very different to the cottage. Ians second medical drama happened soon after we checked in when his sunburn became unbearable prickly heat. He was beside himself and my role was wet flannels and beer bottles rubbed over his back. Luckily had some periton with us and that seemed to help. Well if you come here,the done thing is to see sunrise at...