The Red Centre to Civilisation
Monday, December 20, 2010
A tour of the centre of Australia isn’t complete without a visit to Uluru and Kata Tjuta National Park, home of the infamous Ayers Rock, so we headed there from Alice. After 450kms, a night stop with a friendly emu and lots of desert we made it to the Ayers Rock Resort. A purpose built holiday village just outside the National Park which offers accommodation for the budget traveller right through to the multi-millionaires there’s something for everyone, we opted for a campsite and slept in the car - for a change. There’s a bank, post office, supermarket and it even has it’s own airport! The resort was built as motels and campsites built beside Ayers Rock in the 70s were ruining the landscape so everything was moved 20kms away.
The day we arrived we set off in sight of the Olgas, not as famous as Uluru/Ayers Rock but just as stunning. Also known as Kata Tjuta, so called by the Aboriginals meaning many heads, the spectacular orangy red domes stand 200 metres higher than Uluru. There’s 36 of them packed together and there are a couple of walks to do around them. We opted for the gorge walk which took us through the middle, very cool if a bit windy.
Next we headed to the sunset carpark at Uluru for our fist proper close up of the huge rock. We made ourselves comfy and prepared dinner whilst watching the sunset. A bit of an anti-climax to be honest, it was a very cloudy. Ayers rock lit up beautifully though and we did get some lovely photos!
Sunrise was much the same, but worth getting up at 5am for. We picked up a Japanese hitch hiker who missed his bus into the NP. At 5am we were both a little dozed and offered the guy a lift thinking we were going to the same place.. we weren’t. Toshi wanted to go to the Olgas 45Kms away from Uluru, oops. So we dropped him off at the buses at Uluru hoping he would make it to the Olgas after sunrise (he was to late to catch it at the Olgas anyway). Ben....... I mean Toshi then left his camera in our car and came running back, very confused and said he couldn’t get on any buses. Luckily he found some willing backpackers to take him. The national park is so huge that you can’t go off walking very easy and he probably would have tried to walk to the Olgas and get lost in the process, so we were glad he was no longer our responsibility.
Our visit to Uluru was short and sweet and after our walk we set off south in search of opals in the 4th state of our visit, South Australia. Coober Pedy was our first destination, meaning hole of white man in Aboriginal, basically because 90% of the worlds opals are mined here and people from all over the world wanted a piece of it so moved there to mine. Temperatures in Coober Pedy can be excessive (50 degrees plus) which has drawn many of its occupants into underground houses where the temperature stays the same all year round. When we heard this we thought the whole place would be underground, but it was only a handful of shops and accommodation and since we arrived on Saturday afternoon nearly everything was closed so the only underground place we could see was the Catholic church, which was really small but really pretty. There was a drive in movie theatre here too which was closed for Christmas so we missed out on that too. Taylor did a bit of noodling (looking for Opals) and found a little piece. Unfortunately after all my hints for a new (not green-turning) wedding ring made from opal we left empty handed and continued our drive south. This started with miles and miles of nothing and ended in the third largest city in South Australia, Port Augusta.
We have now left the Outback, nothing can prepare you for the vast amount of nothingness in between roadhouses and mining towns. We are glad though to leave behind the multitude of flies, chance of mowing down a roo or breaking down in the middle of a desert.
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