On Friday morning our little tour bus drives out through the gap in the McConnell Range south of Alice Springs as the morning sun is starting to hit the red rock all around - here, it's interspersed with little patches of green.
The land in general is greener than I expected - this is semi-arid desert, so there are still trees and bushes and grass, though the soil is red. There's not a lot of water, even though there has been an unusual amount of rain recently - the rivers are puddles, but not dry. And it's pretty hot - 32° in the shade, 34°-37° in the sun today. We're coming towards the end of the off season here. Peak season is April-September.
The three main things we're here to see are Uluru (better known as Ayers Rock), Kata Tjuta (aka the Olgas), and Kings Canyon. We're on a tour with (at various stages) 6-10 other people - all female. Normally where you have a decent tourist attraction, tour operators will look for a few other things 10-20 miles away that they can throw in to make up a bigger tour. Here, they throw in pretty much everything within a few hundred kilometres, because those three are pretty much all there is to see for hundreds of kilometres in each direction. But they are very fine sights - and I get plenty of time to catch up with my reading on the bus.
It's a bit of a drive from Alice Springs to Uluru: "462km, 2 right turns, no left turns" as our driver puts it. Along the way there are a couple of rest stops. First up is the camel farm. You can ride a camel once round the yard for 6 bucks - the same price as a camel burger.
Also available in a bun
They also have emus, kangaroos and a dingo. Further down the road, at the last beer shop before the rock, there's a fine display of colourful parrots, a cockatoo that startles Lilly by saying "Hello" (I know, I was expecting it to say "G'day", too), more emus wandering around and more kangaroos. They have a "Help wanted" sign up here, if anyone fancies a job with a bit of a commute. It's also fun to see supply and demand in operation as the prices of everything rises along the road.
And a big cactus. Don't forget the cactus.
Kata Tjuta is our first activity. It's only about 30km from Uluru as the crow flies, but completely overshadowed (metaphorically - Uluru isn't
that tall), which is a shame because it's a stunning place.
First view of Kata Tjuta
From above ground it appears to consist of 36 huge rounded rocks which rise as high as several hundred metres above ground and descend up to 5km into the earth below. Some of the rocks run together, making it a mass of red stone hills and valleys. It looks a bit like Uluru might if it were selectively eroded - the rock is different but looks very similar from any real distance. Its Aboriginal name means "many heads".
We go on the Valley of the Winds walk, which leads up and down and through, with some great views and occasional glimpses of rock wallabies in the distance. We don't get to do the whole circuit because 4 days earlier a huge amount of water fell, leading to big black marks where water ran down the rocks and several washed-out paths. But we see enough to be very impressed.
We drive to a lookout near Uluru for sunset - not that spectacular since the spot is both very busy and in between Uluru and the setting sun. There's a great little lookout point by our campsite where you can see Kata Tjuta against the sunset, and I sprint up there when we get back for a just-in-time photo.
Of course the great night-time view is upwards. With no moon, virtually no lights and no clouds, the night sky is unbelievable. I have never seen so many stars, not even close, even in the countryside, or in the Canadian Rockies. Just breath-taking.
What's 8 inches long, makes women scream and can be found outside the camp toilets?
Also breath-taking was how early we have to get up to be at Uluru for sunrise. It's a bit better than sunset, and the great advantage is that you can walk the 'base walk' loop around the rock without the crowds or heat that come a little later. At times, Lilly and I are the only people around - which means there are approximately 1,000 flies for each of us. Every time I stop walking to take a photo they swarm and I invariably end up with one in my ear while snapping away. This is a pretty good walk - long but not unbearably so (though the shade is very welcome as early as 7:30 a.m.), starting some way from the rock to give you perspective but getting closer until you can touch it, or play frisbee by it, for the second half of the walk.
One of the reasons to see Uluru at sunrise and sunset is that it famously changes colour. For my money this is very overplayed. Hardly a surprise that it looks different in the dark from indirect sunlight from direct sunlight!
We were feeling a bit leggy after walking all around Uluru
And skipping ahead to a near sunset view
Climbing Uluru is a bit controversial. It is permitted, but the Aboriginal people prefer you not to - so there is a sign saying "Please don't climb", but the entrance gate is only closed in adverse weather (which includes being too hot). The info centre says that the proportion of visitors who climb has fallen from c75% to 37%, and cryptically adds that some nationalities are more likely to climb than others. (We noticed that some nationalities are also more likely to give the peace sign or try to take a photo in mid-jump on the Rock. But this is presumably a tour operator thing - if your bus stops and the guide says "Today we are climbing that great big rock", you generally climb the rock.) The main reason given for not climbing is that the Aboriginals feel responsibility for visitors and are sad if they are hurt or die while climbing. There's clearly more to it than this (I believe that Aborigonals only climb as a rite of passage), but neither the rock nor the cultural information centre makes any attempt to explain it. In fact the centre as a whole tells you very little about Aboriginal culture apart from what they eat, and in general they disclose very little of what they do at Uluru and nothing of what they do/did at Kata Tjuta. They are perfectly entitled to their privacy; but if they want people to respect their beliefs, they might gain more traction if they explain them.
That was easy. What's the big deal?
We hadn't planned to climb, and I wouldn't have done if it looked like nobody else was. But there were three coachloads of Japanese tourists up there at the time, so the amount of extra offence we were likely to cause seemed minimal, and when we were told that the two Japanese girls in our group had gone for a climb and were asked (not encouraged) if anyone else wanted to, we decided to go for it.
What, no lift?
This was about 9:30 and it was already a very hot day. The first half of the climb is a fairly steep slope with a chain to help you if you need it. That covers about 75% of the height gain; the rest is up and down, only occasionally steep, and covers a lot of ground laterally. It's fairly intimidating. But every time we wonder if we're mad for trying, we see an elderly Japanese tourist or 5-year-old child coming down, and you really feel you have no excuse for stopping.
The views from the top are pretty grand, and it's interesting to see something our guide said about geology: a lot of the features around here are in a straight line because their constituents were originally carried by water. Only from the top are you high enough to see Kata Tjuta in one direction, then turn 180 degrees to see Mount Conner, Australia's highest table mountain.* There are a couple more features in the same line, too far away to see.
* We drove past this on our way from Alice Springs. It's big and red and flat on top. A lot of people mistake it for Uluru, but at least they have a clue what Ayers Rock looks like, which is more than Lilly did!
The other great thing about coming up here is getting a completely different perspective. The Aboriginals tell us to really see the rock, rather than taking lots of photos. I don't think you can see it properly until you're on it, seeing pools of water and patches of plant life and undulations like a giant beach that you can't see from the base. And putting both hands on the rock to help yourself up or down slopes means you really feel and appreciate the rock in a way that you wouldn't if your life didn't depend on it. Should we have climbed it? Not sure. Am I glad we did? Definitely.
Our tour is a bit disrupted by the rain a few days ago - we're supposed to drive to a campsite in Kings Canyon in the afternoon, but it was badly damaged and access was blocked for a few days - the Canyon itself was closed until the day before we walk it and poor tour groups have spent their third day doing activities in Alice Springs which - as I'll get to in a later post - would be a massive let-down on the quality scale. Luckily we're still going, but we're staying at the same camp here for a second night and doing a massive drive there in the early morning, so we have a spare afternoon to kill. We get dropped in the resort town near Uluru and sneak into one of the hotels for an unlicensed swim in their pool (encouraged by our guide - the hotels don't seem to notice or mind). We take in sunset from the lookout by our camp - which means my sprint the previous evening was a bit of a waste! It's the equinox tonight and a couple of people are playing Rolf Harris style traditional music, which adds a little atmosphere.
We take up the offer of leaving our canvas cabins and sleeping in swags - thick canvas sleeping bags with mattresses - under the stars. This is pleasantly cool compared to the cabins when we go to sleep, but a bit chillier when we wake up. Still, nothing ate us, so I count that as a win. Even after the previous night, the number of stars in the sky comes as a surprise. I don't think I could process it properly so I just had it filed as 'lots'. It's more than that.
Unfortunately our new schedule means we're up at 3am for the 3.5 hour drive, so we can walk Kings Canyon before it gets too hot (forecast is 35 degrees in the shade today).
Just for a minute, as we drive along straight roads surrounded by largely flat country, with low red cliffs rising to our right and the full set of colours of dawn all around us, I can understand why people live here. And then I think, hold on, what are you doing awake at 6:30am, and do you remember how hot it's going to be in a couple of hours and how many insects are going to annoy you today? Oh yeah. I still can't understand why people live here.
But Kings Canyon is worth it. A fantastic walk. The canyon itself is very scenic - red rocks with a scattering of plant life - but it's the top of the canyon that is stunning. The rocks around here have all had water seep into tiny cracks and expand, leaving them looking like ancient buildings constructed from thin red bricks (like most stone around here, it is naturally white but the exposed surface oxidises to various shades of red). I've never seen anything quite like it and did not get tired of it.
By the second half of the walk you can see that in many places the rock has formed domes of ersatz mortarless brick.
Plants cling to life wherever they can - including some that are found virtually nowhere else, but persist here because a layer of shale in the rock strata means that water gets trapped here above the water table. Part of the walk is known as the Garden of Eden for that reason.
All this used to be under water..
Halfway round is a side path to a secluded pool with steep cliffs on all sides - newly topped up with rainwater, and warmer than you would expect (perhaps because water flows into it over and through hot rocks), it's a great place for a cooling swim.
Kings Canyon is just a spectacular place, and a beautiful morning's walk. Definitely my favourite thing to do in this part of the world.
Click on photo for bigger version
And that's pretty much it for the tour, or will be after the 4.5 hour drive back to Alice Springs. Two more good moments - one when our tour bus does an unexpected U-turn because the driver has spotted a Thorny Devil asleep in the road. This is a very strange-looking spiny lizard, about 6 inches long, whose defence posture is to hide its head under its front paws which makes a little fake head pop up from the back of its neck. Cute. We leave him back safely on the side of the road.
The second is at lunchtime, when a French woman asks me "What is this meat? It is a strange colour." "That's beef," I explain, "but properly cooked."
