Just like when you arrive in Cairns and want to see the Great Barrier Reef, there are a plethora of tours you can choose from to get your chance to see that huge orange boulder in the middle of the desert.
When I arrived in Alice I got chatting to a bus driver who recommended the company ‘Way Outback’. It took me a few days to consider but I eventually ended up going with them.
When I arrived in Alice I got chatting to a bus driver who recommended the company ‘Way Outback’. It took me a few days to consider but I eventually ended up going with them.
Between the moment we left Alice Springs to my first sight of the mighty Uluru (or Ayers Rock as it’s otherwise known) was six hours. Alice may well be the jumping off point for the Red Centre, but Australian distances are something else. It is 446 km to Yulara, the main tourist area for the national park, and we had lunch there before heading to ‘The Rock’.
A lot of walks get closed when the temperature rises above 36 degrees, which is why you should ideally visit in the middle of ‘winter’. Lo and behold the base walk was closed, and the walk up the rock. But the local Anangu traditional owners ask that you don’t climb Uluru because it’s sacred. I would never go against their wishes, although I expect an elevated view in this area would be pretty staggering. I’ll have to try to fly over it one day.
A lot of walks get closed when the temperature rises above 36 degrees, which is why you should ideally visit in the middle of ‘winter’. Lo and behold the base walk was closed, and the walk up the rock. But the local Anangu traditional owners ask that you don’t climb Uluru because it’s sacred. I would never go against their wishes, although I expect an elevated view in this area would be pretty staggering. I’ll have to try to fly over it one day.
We slept in swags, which are a sort of plastic sleeping bag with a mattress inside, and the stars in the area make you feel like you’re in a dome. I’ve never seen so many! On these tours you all wake up at pretty much 4am in order to see one of the world’s most famous sunrises. It’s not an experience you’ll ever have alone, but the number of people out for this event makes it feel like some sort of rock concert…and I quite liked that.
I wasn’t going to get anywhere near a decent view of Uluru, so I opted to stand at the front facing Kata Tjuta (aka The Olgas) and I think I won! Check this out – I think it looks like a painting….
I wasn’t going to get anywhere near a decent view of Uluru, so I opted to stand at the front facing Kata Tjuta (aka The Olgas) and I think I won! Check this out – I think it looks like a painting….
Because we were out way before 7am we managed the ‘Valley of the Winds’ walk, but of course the temperature rose and it got closed later in the day. I was fascinated to learn that Uluru and Kata Tjuta are structured in totally different ways. Uluru is a monolith – one massive boulder, but Kata Tjuta is made of lots of boulders. How two such iconic, huge and differently formed sights end up in such a vast area of nothing is just mind-boggling. And I haven’t even mentioned the glorious Mount Connor which can be seen from the road to the national park. I don’t know how this mountain was formed but my head will explode if I start thinking about it!
Mount Connor and the Lasseter Highway
As if I hadn’t been mesmerised enough by all this…we then had to climb King’s Canyon. The same climb as the trannies do in ‘Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’ (LOVE that film!). Ok, so it’s beautiful, massive and all this…but then I find out the top of it used to be THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA and not only that, but the ripples are still visible. They are 400 million years old.
I could hardly form an emotion about this place…I felt totally bemused by the beauty, the human history and rock art, the scale of the structures themselves but most of all the age of the stuff and what must have happened for them to appear like this. I’d love to go back. Maybe I’ll be able to appreciate the area sometime in the future without feeling like my brains have been blown out by something that is as far beyond my imagination as I dare to go!
I could hardly form an emotion about this place…I felt totally bemused by the beauty, the human history and rock art, the scale of the structures themselves but most of all the age of the stuff and what must have happened for them to appear like this. I’d love to go back. Maybe I’ll be able to appreciate the area sometime in the future without feeling like my brains have been blown out by something that is as far beyond my imagination as I dare to go!
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