The rock
Trip Start
May 03, 2008
1
25
47
Trip End
May 02, 2009
Alice Springs,
Northern Territory,
Australia
Friday, July 25, 2008
On the flight down to Alice Springs I was randomly selected (later I would suspect that it could no longer be random) for a swipe of my bag for drugs and explosives. I will go into this more in later blogs. I passed by the way.
Spent a couple of uninspiring days in Alice Springs one which was Marie's Therese's birthday where was celebrated with style visiting the Flying Doctors Museum which was riveting..
Alice Springs
. Went out for dinner that night in one of the few restaurants in Alice. Really not much to do in what is I suppose a normal country town. Set off before daybreak the next morning as Alice is four hours away from the Uluru area. First stop was a petrol station and campsite called Curtin Springs. Halfway along in the middle of nowhere. From there you could see a great red, flattish rock in the distance. It was of course Mount Connor not Uluru. It is the much less famous brother of Uluru about 100km east of it. To me afterwards it nearly seemed more interesting somehow but that's maybe because I always go for the underdog. Curtin Springs is also a cattle station where they have fifty ranch hands to look after cattle that are spread over a distance that is said to be the size of Belgium. Australia does everything big.
Our first proper stop was that of Kata Tjuta which are smaller domed rock formations that are spread out over a distance over 20km. It was an interesting little trek but again not Uluru more like the leftovers from the creation of Uluru.
Next we finally reached the outskirts of Uluru and got the chance to watch the sunset descend over it. Maybe I lack imagination or something as you hear some people waxing lyrical over it's amazing how "the rock" changes colour as the sun gradually goes down and yes it does change colour somewhat but so does everything doesn't it? You can judge for yourself as there are lots and lots of Uluru photos to view with this blog. Anyway despite this and the long wait (why do sunsets have to take so long? I've part of the MTV generation that only has a ten second attention span) it was still a pleasant, if not interesting sight and it was to get our first glimpse of this rock that we travelled so far to get to
Mt Connor, Uluru
. That night we reached our campsite which was just an area in the bush where there were no trees... It was definitely not a campsite. We had to find and break up some dead trees in the pitch dark and then built and big fire to give us warmth. If it was cold in the day, it was even colder at night. I had a thermometer and at one point I looked at it and it read minus one Celsius. We slept in thermal sleeping bags with just a swag around us. For those of you who don't know what a swag is it's not some loot from robbery, it's a thin foam mattress underneath in what is a larger sleeping bag made of rubber or something similar to make it waterproof. It has a flap up the top where you can stake to the ground to prevent getting wet if it rains or in this case you can put the flap over your face so your face doesn't freeze at night. That night I slept with two pairs of socks, trousers, coat and hat I was still freezing. However the one major plus point was that there were no clouds in the sky and no lights anywhere around. This meant you see every star in the sky, which really was an amazing sight. Never seen anything quite like it.
Next morning we travelled to Uluru again to view it at sunrise. It was still freezing and dark and it was slightly comical a group of ten or so people dashing down the base of the rock trying to get a good spot to view it at sunrise
Curtin Springs, Uluru
. All the movement didn't really get us warm though and we all fairly miserable in the cold. We walked around the base of the rock but didn't climb it to be respectable to the Aboriginal beliefs. After the exertions, we drove all the way back to Curtin Springs where we would stay on a proper campsite where we would around sleep outside in our swags. The only plus was that there was less chance of anything disturbing you in your sleep than in the bush.
On our last morning we climbed Kings Canyon for sunrise, which was a trek and I have found out researching that the locals call the first climb heart attack hill, it says it all. But it was another beautiful sight when we finally reached the top of the view that stretched out below. Afterwards we bundled into the van and the drove the long journey home, all of us quite exhausted and hoping for some central heating, hot water bottle, and bed in fact I'd even settle for a roof and walls.
