First things first, I have to show off and say the photo you can see is mine! (It's the back of Ayers Rock, the less well known side). I thought it was unfair that such a cool place didn't have a proper photo, and thanks Ciao team for sorting it out.
We spent seven months in Australia, which obviously isn't going to fit in one op, so I thought I'd start at the very pinnacle of our Oz experience. Although it isn’t the easiest place to get to, Ayers Rock has to be one of the most magical places I have ever visited.
Pretty much slap bang in the centre of Australia, Ayers Rock was “discovered” by the a Victorian explorer who somehow managed to get back and tell people about it, unlike the majority of other explorers who wound up just another pile of dessicated bones in the landscape while looking for a route from south to north, or even more implausibly trying to find the “inland sea” which was fabled to exist until people finally cottoned on to the fact it was all a big fat lie.
About 4km long and 1.5km wide, he named it after someone important at the time who undoubtedly didn’t deserve it, and isn't remembered for anything else as far as I know. Of course, it had been known as Uluru to generations of Aborigines before then, but back in those days one didn’t take any notice of silly things like that.
Uluru became somewhat a symbol of the Aborigines' fight for recognition and independence; it features on the Aboriginal Flag flown outside the tentembassy in Canberra, and was worn by a delighted Cathy Freeman when she won the gold medal at the Sydney Olympics.
The area was finally given back to the local Anangu tribe in 1984 with the proviso that a
National Park be created around Uluru and Kata Tjuta (aka The Olgas) its near neighbour (well, 40km away is near out there), and the park is leased to the Government for 100 years as part of the agreement.
A lot of people visit Ayers Rock with the sole intention of climbing it. I had no such crazy ideas. Climb? A Big Rock? With no hope of an ice cream at the top? Not me. People have actually died doing it, or at the very least lost hats and sunglasses!
When we got there, though, we discovered that actually, the traditional owners would prefer you not to climb. Phew! I had an excuse! They feel it is a little stupid and somewhat disrespectful to climb Uluru, so my partner, who was considering it, decided not to either. There are large signs around the climbing area asking you not to climb, but you are not stopped from doing so unless it is particularly windy and therefore dangerous.
Instead, you can choose to walk around the base, all 9km of it, if you want, or there are also cave paintings you can look at, although they are not of the highest quality you might see in a trip to Oz. If that sounds too energetic, you can drive completely around the rock, which is what we chose to do after a short walk. The other side of Uluru looks strange, as we are so used to only seing the aspect from the sunset viewing station. Whichever way you look at it though, it is magnificent. There simply are not enough superlatives.
Some areas are prohibited to non-Aborigines, and some are even out of bounds to males of the tribe and others to females. There are other places where you aren’t allowed to take photographs, and believe me, you will get shouted at, as all the Germans who mysteriously decide to ignore the signs in a myriad of languages find out.
Visit the visitor centre. Go on – it’s free and there especially for the purpose. It’s a great building in its own right, very sympathetic to its surroundings and only about 1km from Uluru. There you can learn about Uluru and Kata Tjuta and some of the legends surrounding the rocks; the local Aboriginal tribes; how to speak some aboriginal words; and also about the flora and fauna of the area. Incredibly, the one thing it is very hard to find out about is the geology of the rocks and why they are there, other than the Aboriginal interpretations including wallabies, rainbow serpents and suchlike.
It isn’t actually a rock at all, but a cluster of them stuck together and coated with a crust, although this is rather difficult to discover at the visitors centre, as not even the staff we spoke to seemed to know how it came to exist. We were puzzled, as you can see in certain places where the outer crust has broken off and it looks somewhat like a honeycomb underneath.
In the end, after enough pestering, one of the staff got out the training book the official Uluru guides have to study, which did in fact have a geology section explaining that the rock is formed by compacted boulders and sediment at the bottom of what was once an enormous sea. It was compacted over thousands of years into a hard lump and then gradually the sea disappeared and the surrounding sediment was washed away too. People who know about this sort of thing believe that there is actually quite a lot of it still buried. A bit like a big red iceberg, I suppose. Uluru’s nearest and less famous neighbour, Kata Tjuta, was formed in the same way, but it has been eroded more quickly and is a series of domes instead of just the one big mound.
So now you know.
If you’re there, watch the dancing video. If you can keep a straight face, you are a better person than I. Unfortunately, there is something quite hilarious about large naked women with pendulous breasts painting their bodies and then bouncing up and down. There is something equally hilarious about naked men with pendulous penises and testicles doing the same. At least I wasn’t the only person to see the video to stifle a giggle, there are other people equally shallow and uncultured as I.
The highlight of a visit has to be watching the sun setting behind Uluru. There is a special car park to view the sunset, and the coach park where the posh tourists have their silver service meals is somewhere else, thank god. The colour of the rock changes colour in quite an incredible way as the sun sets. It starts off orange, and goes red through to finally purple. Some people set their cameras up on tripods to take a photograph every few minutes or so. We weren’t that keen, but we did take a few and the difference is quite marked, although when you’re actually there watching it, it’s not always that noticeable as it changes quite subtly and slowly, but you do start to think “hmm, was it this purple a few moments ago?”
Apparently sunrises are similar, but not quite as good. I can neither confirm not deny this, since we didn’t get up early enough. We got to the centre in the middle of winter and it was freezing. Literally, below zero degrees in the shade. Who said the desert was hot?! Nighttimes were unbelievably cold. We had to sleep with the poptop of our campervan down to keep in the heat, wearing every piece of clothing we owned in bed, with empty Dr Pepper bottles filled with boiling water in the bed to keep us warm and every spare piece of fabric on top of the bed. So, unsurprisingly, at 6am when the sun came up, we were still in bed trying not to get frostbite or hypothermia.
Entrance into the park which contains both Uluru and Kata Tjuta was a bargain $15 – about £6. Getting to the park itself, however, is a bit of a trek, and that’s an understatement. It’s a 1000km round trip from Yulara, the town just a couple of km from Uluru, to Alice Springs, the next nearest town, and Alice Springs isn’t near to anything. It was another 1000km round trip for us to get there from the main highway encircling the continent. My God, it was worth it, though.
You can fly to Yulara, but somehow that seems cheating. I can’t imagine that it would have the same impact if you hadn’t driven for almost a week through some of the most boring landscape the world possesses just to get there. A notable exception are the sublime Devils Marbles, a little known collection of enormous round boulders, some perched on top of others, purportedly laid by the Rainbow Serpent on her way through the landscape.
They conveniently lie just next to the highway north of Alice Springs, and there is a campsite at the base with the customary drop toilets or “dunnys”. Another exception we visited on the way back was Kings Canyon, another 200km trip out of our way... but its walls are stripy, and there are smaller stripey domes at the top. It's worth the trip if you're there anyway and you've got the time.
You can’t camp at the base of Uluru anymore, but the campsite at Yulara is well run, clean and has plenty of facilites. It was, however, the most expensive campsite we stayed in in the whole of Australia at $25 a night, but even that’s only £10. There are also hotels at Yulara, a hostel, a small shop, doctor, post office etc. but don’t expect anything else. It’s there to serve the tourists who visit the rock and that’s all.
It is easy to see why the place has been part of sacred traditions for so long. Stranded in the vastness of the desert, this big, red rock has an amazing, majestic aura. It’s hard to explain, but it just looks so good. It’s like an old friend. I even felt a little sad when we left. This probably sounds like sentimental claptrap, but it’s true. I miss Uluru. I missed it the day we left. Maybe one day we’ll go back, but it’s undeniably a long way to go to see a large lump of red earth sticking out of the ground. Believe me though, if you’re in the area, give or take a couple of thousand miles, it’s worth it.
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