Day 13 Alice Springs to Kata Tjuta and Uluru (Ayers Rock)

Day 13 Alice Springs to Kata Tjuta and Uluru (Ayers Rock)

We were collected from outside our hotel promptly at 6am – by our cheery guide and bushman, Brook – quite a character…..ex army, friend of the late Steve Irwin, Tour de France mechanic, lives out in the bush for several months each year…..   We collected our travel companions from several other hotels and hostels and set off….  Our first stop was a camel farm not far outside Alice Springs. The owner races camels – as well as selling them for meat – and also keeps a variety of birds and other animals.  The dingo in the yard was very friendly….I think perhaps dingoes have had rather bad press…

Our second stop was at the very centre of Australia – Erldundra – part of a large cattle station – over a million acres for only 1500 head of cattle – that is for sale…. Apparently, only 6 visitors came in the first year after it was set up as a roadhouse with facilities for tourists - - there are quite a few more now, but I’m still not tempted as a business investment….

We passed a very large flat mountain – Mt Connor – that Brook told us many independent travellers mistake for Uluru….Imagine their disappointment when they return to Alice Springs with their photos of their great day with no crowds at Uluru only to find that they never saw it at all.  I do see how they could make the mistake though – a huge mountain on the right road…..but it’s grey not red, shaped like a tootbrush and not a monolioth….oh – and there are no tour buses, ‘Keep off the Rock’ signs or aboriginal people!

We continued for another hour or so along Latemer Highway – named after Harold Latemer who was convinced that there was a river of gold in central Australia and convinced a lot of people to join in his search. Eventually he ended up wandering around aboriginal lands and the story goes he was found half mad with out his trousers and nursed back to health by the aboriginals only to set off once again in search of his river  He never found it – but had a road and casino named after him….The story goes that his sons are still searching…

The road skirted a large inland salt lake and the landscape became more and more arid as we neared the Simpson Desert….clearly people don’t have enough to do here…as they decorate trees with tyres….and in one case a whole car.  There is also a ‘Hat Tree’ at the turn off for the national park…..The idea is to leave your hat and take another off the tree in an odd sort of desert exchange…..

The temperature was approaching 40 degrees C by then, so we stayed in the cool (sometimes too cold!) air conditioning of the bus and skipped the hats business…It was too hot for the wildlife to be out too…except a few scavenger birds looking for any creature who might have ventured out and then expired in the scorching sun.  Brook told us a morality tale about a hitchhiker who refused assistance and perished….alongside warnings to drink water, drink more water, drink yet more water…. and descriptions of the uses for the few plants in evidence…..The paddy melon produces the poison tips for arrow head; the roots of the spinifex grass make a glue – unlike the invasive South African grass that is taking over; the desert coconut produces poisonous fruit and the desert oak reaches down 12 metres to the artesian groundwater or grows in clumps near watering holes….

We arrived at our camp in the Yulara Resort in time for lunch.  Our camp host, Cindy – who turned out to be Brook’s partner – had prepared camel burgers for lunch – and very tasty they were!  There was a rain storm brewing over Uluru – a unique and amazing sight apparently - and we could see lightning in the distance, but it was decided to take us to Kata Tjuta first as planned…and then to hopefully time a view of Uluru with waterfalls.

Kata Tjuta is a group of large rocks – made of a red conglomerate stone – and, like Uluru, important to the Anangu aboriginal people.  We walked through gaps in the rocks to an observation point – only a few kilometres, but draining in the extreme heat – to find that all the other tracks had been closed for safety.  Again, it seems that a tourist had died there of heat exhaustion and dehydration not too long before our arrival….and they weren’t taking any chances.

We drove from there to Uluru – chasing the rain….but the storm went elsewhere….We did see a sand storm on the horizon and some great ‘whirly-whirlies’ (Brook says this is the correct name in contradiction to Sylvia and the GCSE textbook, citing Steve Irwin as his source…)  and with a glass of champagne at the sunset viewing area, we saw several rainbows – one a nearly complete ring – over Uluru. Quite an amazing sight!

Dinner was kangaroo and beef steaks, camel sausages, coleslaw and barbecued potatoes – followed by a delicious mango cake and ice cream.  We were shown how to set up a bush swag to sleep out of doors – and our ‘glamping’ tents with beds, electricity and fans.  Brook gave us all the hard sell for sleeping in the swags.  Rob was taken in – [with which he heartily disagrees, claiming it was all part of the romance of the adventure – but I am sticking with taken in] - but I was suffering a bit from the heat of the day and very happy between clean sheets with the fan blowing over me!