As I retired at 9pm last night, I woke naturally at 0300 (six hours usually does it for me). I dozed till 0540 when I started to get ready for my 0615 departure to Uluru.I had a nice brekkie of a cheap clearance croissant (heated in a pan), muesli and three-in-one coffee from the supermarket.
Sunrise and Ranger Walk
After paying AUD25 for my National Park fee, it was a short shuttle drive to the Uluru sunrise viewing point. The sun rose at 0730. It was unspectacular due to the slightly cloudy condition.
We continued to the Mala carpark where I joined a guided ranger walk at 0800. He was very knowledgeable and I gained a few interesting snippets:
- The local natives use natural landmarks as storyboards for passing on key life skills to the next generation (eg. about travelling in the harsh conditions).
- They also supplement these with rock paintings. They mark direction (eg. to a water hole) with symbols which resemble emu footprints. Unfortunately to Europeans, they look like arrows but pointing in the opposite direction!
- Dot paintings are a recent development.
- Containers are made by hacking out one side of the tree trunk so that it doesn’t kill the tree.
- Uluru is red because the stone contains iron which rusts when exposed to water. Freshly-exposed bits are in fact bluish-grey. So the Red Centre of Australia is really bluish-grey!
Base Walk
As I had fed myself reasonably well this morning, I was in a state to continue walking around the base of Uluru. I separated from the ranger walk at 0930 (a little later than expected). The walk took me 2.5h even though it was signposted as a 3.5h walk. That was fortunate as I made it back to the bus stand within minutes of the bus leaving back for the hotel.
The walk itself was flat and easy. The pace allowed me to appreciate the different textures of Uluru. The outcrop is actually in the shape of a tear-drop (roughly speaking), so it is actually quite small on one side.
Walpa Gorge
As I had purchased a 2 day pass for the Uluru Express shuttle, I made the most of it by going to the Walpa Gorge in the afternoon. Compared to some walks I’ve done before it was pretty much a non-event.The 1h signposted time was just enough. We barely had time to appreciate the area and had to turn back immediately at the end to make it back to the bus by the agreed time.
Sunset
The shuttle did around of Uluru’s ring road for us to appreciate its beauty before stopping at a lookout where we watched the sunset. It was very beautiful, but probably not any prettier than in full daylight.
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- Clouds meant that Uluru wasn’t illuminated at its best at sunrise.
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- Uluru at sunrise.
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- Rock paintings. Dot painting came later, relatively recently.
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- This gentle slope (relatively) is the path to the summit.
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- Pock-marked face of Uluru. In Asia and the sub-continent I would have expected cave-temples with Buddhas, and in Turkey, rock-churches.
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- Pock-marked face of Uluru. In Asia and the sub-continent I would have expected cave-temples with Buddhas, and in Turkey, rock-churches.
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- The pointy-end of Uluru; less photographed compared to the two long ends.
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- Uluru detail.
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- Kata Tjuta from a distance
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- Uluru at sunset.
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- Uluru at sunset.