Uniquely Uluru
Trip Start
Oct 01, 2007
1
37
42
Trip End
Jan 07, 2008
Uluru,
Australia
Friday, November 30, 2007
was very quickly replaced by an arid looking desert scattered with salt lakes here and there.
01. Flying from Adelaide to Alice Springs
As you get closer to Alice Springs the desert goes from a sandy colour to a deep red colour - the same kind of colour as Uluru. It was all very exciting!
02. Walking on Mars
I stepped off the plane in Alice Springs and was hit by a dry heat - it was the same sensation that you get when you open a hot oven and your face is too close to the door. It was only 11 in the morning already it was 42 degrees!
I want to take a moment to tell a funny anecdote that happened on the plane - I was sitting in the second row in a window seat and there was a couple in the seat in front with the most obnoxious child I've ever seen. He was about 5 or 6 years old and he moaned and thrashed about in his chair for the whole flight - in an annoying, winy,
Aussie accent. He didn't want his food (he threw it at the window), he wouldn't put the blind of his window up and as we landed he threw his pencils all over the floor. As we taxied to the terminal I picked them up and wondered which of his orifices the pencils might fit up - the little shit. Presently he stood on his chair and started shouting at the other passengers. I had to physically hold myself back from not shoving both pencils up his nostrils as his annoying little head bobbed angrily in front of me. His parents were totally useless...imagine this in a winy Aussie accent - "Shane, would you please sit down? Shane, the captain will come and tell you off if you don't be a good little boy." etc, etc...I mean, what's that all about? Sit the kid down yourself and tell it to shut up. Grrrrrrrr! The air stewardess who'd been very patient the whole flight started to become annoyed and practically had to restrain the kid to sit him down and eventually he did with accompanying moans and complaints about this and that. She noticed that I had a couple of the pencils still in my hand so I gave them to her and she gave them back to the boy. As I got off the plane I told her that we should have lobotomised this kid with them, rather than give them him back - the smile that she gave me made me realise that she was thinking the same thing as well!
When I arrived in Yulara (the nearest settlement to Uluru) I didn't have anywhere to stay yet. In fact Yulara is the only place to stay near Uluru. It's a small resourt that has been custom built just outside the national park and it's a rip off. I had to stay there though because there's no other choice. It's either that or sleep in the outback which you're not allowed to do or head back to Alice Springs which is 450 Km away. They've got you stitched up basically...so I had to pay 40$AUS per night to stay in a dorm in the Outback Pioneer
hostel which by any standards is twice as much as you should be paying.
On the first night I spent some time watching the sun going down. They say that the sunsets here are spectacular due to combination of the desert atmosphere and red sand - it was certainly breathtaking watching it.
03. Sunset #1
04. Sunset #1
05. Sunset #2
06. Sunset #3
Apart from the daylight robbery that is the Ayers Rock Resort, the Red Centre (as the area is known) is quite amazing. And the heat is something else - as I said, it's a dry heat and when the wind blows which it often does it's like a furnace. From time to time they close paths (paths which anywhere else would always be safe to walk on) because of the high temperatures.
07. It gets pretty hot!
It's a pretty unforgiving place where it's semi arid (around 350mm of rain per year) and yet there's loads of wildlife and the place is greener than I would have imagined. In total I spent three days in and around Yulara. I spent an afternoon touring round the Olgas mountains (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Olgas) on the first day. It was ferociously hot and the air conditioning on the bus wasn't working properly which made the bus like an oven. A couple of German's on the bus started to feel unwell on the bus and the driver was getting a bit worried about them. But we carried on anyway and had a small hike into one of the valleys. It was incredibly hot and although we only walked about 2 KM it was hard going to the point of being exhausting. The sheer heat really saps your energy and it's no wonder that people who get lost in this unforgiving landscape don't last long. You are recommended to drink 1 litre of water *per *hour* when you are doing any kind of exercise here and I can see why.
08. The Olgas #1
09. The Olgas #2
10. Thirsty Work!
11. The Olgas #1
12. Need water!
13. Dressed to Impress!
14. Dessicated followers of fashion
15. The Olgas from a distance
The same evening I went to see Uluru as the sun set. I'd been dying to see it and now here I was. In fact the sun disappeared behind some clouds as it was setting, so I never got to see the rock change colour as it's supposed to, but in any case it was still pretty spectacular. It's strange because up close Uluru looks completely different than you imagine it would. It's full of holes and scars and pitted here and there - the shapes and contours are amazing.
17. A slice of Aboriginal heaven
18. What was he making me do?
19. So let's try this another way
20. It's a big old rock!
21. Rock #1
22. Rock #2
23. Sunset at the rock
I decided that I wanted to see Uluru during sunrise as well, even if this did mean getting up ridiculously early to do so. So I booked myself on a sunrise walk around the base of Uluru. Basically you walk around the base of the rock to see the sunrise and to admire the changing face of it and to hear the aboriginal stories about how the rock came to be. This area is one of the most sacred aboriginal sites in Australia. Because it's so sacred you are also discouraged to climb the rock out of respect to the people - it'd be like climbing over gravestones. Still, many tourists want to climb the rock and do so - up to 300 people per day might be clambering over the rock. It's pretty dangerous though - if the temperature rises above 36 degrees, or there's a 25 knots wind at the summit, or the aborigines ask for the rock to be closed for religious reasons (i.e. if an elder dies) then the rock is closed to people wanting to climb it. It won't be long, I think, until it will be closed for good to climbers. It's not an easy climb either. Over the years, 35 or so people have died climbing or descending the rock - mostly from heart attacks brought on by the physically demanding conditions - the steep climb plus dry heat. So the sunrinse tour started at 5am. I'm so not a morning person and I almost missed the wake up call - it was only because a swedish woman staying in my dorm woke me at 4.45 that I didn't miss it (And no, we weren't doing anything together!). It was worth getting up early for. At that time of the day it's nice and cool and there was a lovely breeze blowing and so the 10km trek around the base was easier going than it would have been in the full heat of the day. It was wonderful to see the sun rise and it was also astonishing as we walked around the rock to see how it changes in shape and texture and colour and character. Some of the rock formations are truly astonishing like the impossible looking wave rock that looks like a 4 metre high breaker that's been frozen as rock or the heart shaped formation.
24. Wave Rock
25. Heart of stone!
26. He'll never make a surfer
Some shapes even look like faces with sinister or funny grins.
27. I'm not getting aggressive!
One of my favourites is a part of the rock that looks like someone with 7 or 8 belly buttons!
28. The rock belly button!
Even from a distance but at different angles, the rock looks completely different.
29. Changing face of the rock #1
30. Changing face of the rock #2
31. Changing face of the rock #3
It was also lovely to hear the aboriginal "dreamtime" stories of how the rock was created and the stories and mythology that surround the rock. The guides were very friendly and knowledgeable and you could feel how passionate they were about this place. It was lovely. 
32. Sunrise at Uluru
33. The rock comes to life
34. Sunrise #3
35. Perspectives #1
36. Perspectives #2
37. Perspectives #3
38. Perspectives #4
39. Another watering hole
40. It's just the sun rising
41. Rock Art
42. Don't walk this path!
43. Another shot of the path
By 10am were were done and the furnace was starting to get very hot again. I had arranged to pick up a hire car and so I spent the rest of the day driving around the rock and the Olgas just marvelling at how uniquely beautiful they both are. 
44. I like driving in my car
I also visited the cultural centre which wasn't great but I discovered something there...I have a friend who collects sand (I don't know why, but she does). So in each country that I've visited I've got her a bit of sand from one place or another. I figured that the piece de resistance would be some sand from Ayers Rock so I gathered a little bit on the sunrise walk. It was only when I was at the cultural centre that I realised that taking sand or rock from Ayers rock is a cursed thing and if you do then all sorts of terrible things will happen to you. The superstition of this so called curse is pretty strong because there's actually a "sorry book" at the cultural centre with literally hundreds of letters sent in from all over the world with stories from people who took rocks or sand and have been plagued by bad luck. To atone themselves, these people have posted back the rock and sand they "stole" and sent a grovelling apology! Now I'm not generally superstitious and I thought long and hard about taking my sand back to where I took it. One side was telling me not to be so silly and to be rational and being rational it wasn't anyone else sand to stake a claim on and that there's no such things as curses, but in the end I settled for the fact that taking sand from Uluru would be like taking a hymnbook from a church and that if everyone did what I did there'd be no sand left anyway, so I took my sand back to the spot I took it from, emptied it out onto the ground, made my apologies and left. (I did get some sand from outside the National Park boundaries - the great spirits of the outback can tell sand which has been taken from outside of the park and they don't mind!). So that was my trip to Uluru and it was lovely. Looking at Uluru stirs up something deeply spiritual and primeval and it's an experience that I will not forget quickly. And so as we taxied up the runway at Uluru airport to fly to tropical Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef there was a dust devil just a couple of hundred metres from the plane which had created an fiery column of sand suspended from the sky.
45. Dust devil at the airport
It was an impressive sight and I wondered secretly if it was a sign from the mighty spirits of Uluru thanking me for putting the sand back where it belonged...
