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Uluru and the Red Centre
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On Monday I caught a flight from Sydney out to Alice Springs in the middle of Australia. Alice (formally known as Stuart) has a lot of history associated with the first telegraph line that crossed Australia in the 1870s. It's not the nicest town in the world and there were plenty of Aboriginal people hanging around doing nothing. The area had a notorious reputation as the "river of grog", but it is now a dry city with drinking in public banned and the sale of alcohol banned before 3pm.
I headed into town for a free didgeridoo lesson with world famous Andrew Langford. My attempts at playing sounded more like an elephant until I figured out the right way to play, but even then it sounded quite bad. Andrew showed what he is capable of, which certainly impressed the crowd. After that I went for a walk along the Todd river, which is a dry river bed, and headed up to the old telegraph station. Nearby is the location of the pool of water that gave Alice Springs its name, but it was also completely dry. It was a very hot day but I did get to see my first wild wallabies!
The next day I started my tour of the red centre with a company called Groovy Grape. There were 19 of us in the group and although I wasn't the oldest, many of the others were at least 10 years younger than me! Our first stop was at the King's Creek Cattle Station which was a few hours drive from Alice Springs. Our driver and tour guide Peter sorted out dinner for us whilst we all messed around with our Swags. These are waterproof canvas shelters which contain a mattress and a sleeping bag. You just zip them up and sleep under the starts, hoping that the
snakes & bugs don't visit. I didn't sleep particularly well, but I did get to see an impressive night sky and plenty of shooting stars.
It was an early start to our day as we rolled up our swags and packed the bus. Just after dawn we headed over to Kings Canyon and went on the rim walk up and around the canyon. The views were impressive and in the middle of the walk we crossed down into the lovely Garden of Eden. After the walk we got back on the bus for a few hours to get to Uluru (Ayers Rock) in time for sunset. The weather had been a bit cloudy all day because we were catching the tale end of a cyclone that was hitting Adelaide. Fortunately we had a great sunset with the last of the evening sun lighting up the huge rock. Uluru is a single piece of rock (a monolith) which is 348m high, and it stands in the middle of a flat desert. I was suprised by just how green the area was... for some reason I expected the Red Centre to be just that... with no trees!
The next morning we were up very early to get to the sunrise viewing spot for Uluru. During sunrise the colour of the rock changes from darker reds to much lighter colours. It was surprisingly cold and the wind meant the climb up the summit was closed for safety reasons. We headed over to Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) for the famous Valley of the Winds walk. This was a great walk through the "Many Heads", which are made from a different type of rock to Uluru. The rock has weathered over the years to form 36 smooth domes.
We headed back to Uluru in the afternoon but unfortunately the climb was still closed due to the high wind speed. We spent the afternoon walking the 9km track around the base of the huge rock. It wasn't too hot because of the wind but there were plenty of pesky flies. Parts of the rock are sacred sites which we are not allowed to photograph, but it is very impressive to stand at the base of the rock and stare up to the summit. We headed back to camp in late afternoon and watched sunset over Uluru and the Olgas.
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