Wednesday 14th November – Uluru

Obviously I spoke too soon about all things electronic yesterday as by the time we had a shower the internet had gone down to the whole town and didn’t come back up until lunch time on Wednesday! Luckily we had enough cash for dinner last night and didn’t need any fuel as everything is now a cash society but the ATM’s are not working so it is a case of whatever you have is what you can spend! The forecast is that today will be as hot as yesterday so we got up early as a number of the walks will close again at 11.00. Our plan today was to walk the base of Uluru which is about 10.5k. We got to the car park about 7.30 and set off. They say it will take somewhere between 3 – 4 hours to do the walk but we were not in any hurry as we have all day. You can climb to the top of Uluru which is strange given that there are places that are so sacred to the Aboriginal people they won’t let you take photographs of them but a large number of people were on their way up I didn’t fancy it as it looked hard work and quite slippery, luckily Chris didn’t want to do it either so we started our walk. We actually found out later that although the Aboriginals would rather you didn’t climb the rock it was a condition of the Australian Government that the climb remained open when they handed the lands back. This was in the 60’s and it would seem that they have come to some kind of agreement as the climb will close in 2019. Uluru is actually the tip of a huge slab of rock that continues below ground for possibly 5 – 6 km. It is 3.6km long and 348m at its tallest point, apparently the colour changes of Uluru result from the filtering of the earth’s atmosphere on the suns rays and as you walk round the colours definitely change as does the look of the rocks some look quite smooth whereas others are very weathered. Much like the rocks at Kings Canyon Uluru is actually made up of grey rock, but the red is the rusting of the iron in the arkose and bits of rock that are left after water and oxygen in the air have decayed minerals in the rest of the rock. From a distance it looks very smooth but it is actually rather weather beaten with a number of caves and crevices dotted all over the face, that plus the clouds make it easy to see faces and monsters in the rock face which the Aboriginals translated into stories of how the land was created. As we walked round a couple of these stories were written on boards so you can read them on the way round. A couple of the stories were variations of ones we have heard before about how you shouldn’t do anything wrong but if you do then you will be punished and then looked after by the person that punishes you – this one had an extra bit about the fact they didn’t look after the person that was injured but his aunt found him and basically extracted revenge on the people that didn’t respect the code. By the time we finished the walk the people that had been climbing to the top were almost all down, they had closed the climb due to the heat but we watched one woman who found it very difficult to get back down and you could tell even from the distance we were that the person with her was loosing his patience! She eventually made it down and we set off to go round the viewing platforms. Our first stop was the sunset and sunrise viewing platform which gave a great view of both Uluru and Kata Tjuta, it was quite a large area so we walked round a bit then got back in the car and went to the next spot. Again really good views of Uluru and as you move round it the light changes and you see different things. We ended up driving all the way round the rock as well as walking it but the views were definitely different. By the time we had visited all the viewing platforms we decided we would come back to the hotel for a relax, the internet was back up when we got back so we went and filled the car up with fuel while we could use a credit card then came back and updated all the pictures and blogs that we couldn’t load yesterday. After a bit of a relax it was time to jump in the shower and get ready to go out as we had booked a flight over Uluru and Kata Tjuta at sunset. We were picked up by our pilot and driven to the airport. This time there were other people in the plane but there were still only five of us so not really a big group. After takeoff we flew over Kata Tjuta first which I still think is my favourite and it was interesting that from the air you can see that a number of the mounds have eroded quite badly in fact the just look like small bumps from the air. We flew over the walk we did yesterday and then started heading to Uluru we could actually see Mount Connor in the distance but we couldn’t get a good shot of all three. As the sun began to go down the colours on the rock started to change on both Kata Tjuta and Uluru it was fascinating to see how they change. I had a great seat right at the back of the plane in the middle so I could see out of both windows meaning that I had great views whichever side of the plane the view was. We flew around Uluru a few times until the sun finally vanished below the horizon and unfortunately it was time to head back to the airport for landing. It was fantastic and a great way to end our time in Ayers Rock. We had something to eat before heading back to the hotel to update the website and pack everything up again ready for Adelaide tomorrow.