Uluru

01/09/2018

We are both a bit excited as today is the day that we will make it to Uluru (Ayers Rock), it seems a bit weird that just over a month ago we were at home enjoying the company of friends and family, flew back to Townsville and now we are almost at Uluru.

From Alice Springs we needed to head down the Stuart Highway for about 180kms and then turn right onto Lasseter Highway and drive for another 212 kms and bingo, we are there …… we always thought it was a lot closer to Alice Springs then what it really is.

So the GPS tells us that we are about 140kms away from Uluru and we get our first sights of the rock, we stop take photos and begin getting a bit more excited. It reminds us of when we went to NZ with the Dellards in 2009 and saw snow for the first time, it was on the side of the road, we stopped and had to play in it straight away.

As we kept driving we seemed to be going past the rock, we thought maybe we missed a turn, a quick check on the GPS and no we are going OK. We continued as the rock slowly disappeared over our left shoulders.

Then as GPS showed us we were about 56 kms away from Uluru a new rock appeared, after a quick bit of embarrassing research, we discovered the first one was Mount Conner (very different shape, but still very big). Oh well, at least we found it.

There is no real free camping near Uluru, the closest is Yulara resort which has many different options from 5 star, to the camping ground that has cabins and space for tents and caravans. At first they insisted that we had to stay in one of their powered sites at $53 p/n, however after some negotiation they agreed that we could stay in the overflow section for $25 p/n, this suited us much better and for 3 of the 4 nights that we stayed we were the only ones in this section.

It really is quite amazing being in the presence of this huge Rock, a bit hard to explain but something that we both found truly moved by.

The next four days we spent viewing, riding, walking and climbing Uluru & Kata Tjuta (only col climbed Uluru, out of respect for Anangu the Traditional Owners, Rachel chose not to). We also visited the Cultural Centre and enjoyed the Ranger talks and guided tours. To our surprise the Yulara resort offered a lot of talks, tours, workshops and even theatre that was all free and mostly hosted by indigenous staff. It was a great insight into their culture, next time we come here we plan to attend more of these workshops, they really are good.

Photos from Uluru

Photos form Kata Tjuta

In addition to the cultural stuff that the resort offers it also has many bars (we visited 5) and the expected resort kind of stuff, sunbeds around the pool, and here is the biggy …… they have green soft lush grass, its been sooooo long since we have seen grass.