Sunrise over Uluru
Walk at Kata Tjuta
Aboriginal Cultural Centre
Swimming pool!
Closer look at Uluru
Sunset and Champagne
Barbecue and bugs
Distance: 130km
Total Distance:
The day should have begun at 5:20am. Instead I woke up at 4:30am with a desperately dry mouth and a need to pee. Such fun we have in the desert! Everything revolves around water. The litre I'd left by my swag wasn't enough, but a second round seemed to move me one step further from prune. This would happen again the next morning. Each morning I'm having to drink 4-5 litres in the first few hours of waking. The temperature at night is 19C. Seems to be just the dry air taking it out of me as I sleep. However, this sort of situation, whilst extreme, isn't entirely unusual to me. Hence why I have several litres of bottles so I can keep well hydrated.
Having survived the night of slow dehydration and being surrounded by venomous invertebrates it was time to prep for sunrise. This involved preparing for more dehydration, strong sun, and something memorable. 4 litres of water, sun cream, camera. Easy.
Our new German guy who joined at Alice Springs took my favourite photo for expressing the sunrise I saw. A photo of 13 cameras held above 15 heads as the sun rose. It was lovely, it was pleasant, it was beautiful. But I'm not much of a sunrise watcher if we're honest (extra hour in bed is preferable). Thus the thing that will stick with me most was the hilarious sight of everyone else. 100 people, all with various cameras, staring out into the sun, trying to get their own perfect shots. Lots of shots. Especially the men having a midlife crisis- each had a very expensive ginormous camera, maybe with a telescopic lens, maybe a tripod, taking 10-50,000 photos at a time, some of which they might look at. "It was such a special experience. I really felt at one with nature. It was awe inspiring."- sun came up, pictures were taken, time for breakfast. Sorry, I've seen too many sunrises to see one as "unique". But the girls seemed to enjoy it. I'd rather be hiking over something.
Time to go over Kata Tjuta.
Many millions of years ago Western Australia had a mountain range larger than the Himalayas. To the east the land was all under the sea. An enormous river ran from the mountains into this sea. One meander of this river dropped mostly boulders, rocks, and pebbles, with a little sand. A later meander dropped the smaller sand particles. At each site these were bound together by sand and pressure. The latter became the world's largest single rock- Uluru. The first created a structure which is nobbley and heavily watered, surrounded by dropped boulders and collections of rocks. This is Kata Tjuta- "Many Heads"- a similar height and circumference to Uluru, but made of many rolling lumps.
Kata Tjuta is a site sacred to Aboriginal men. No Aboriginal women are allowed here (though non-aboriginal women are). It was used as the area where men taught older boys how to hunt and find water. The whole structure is sacred in this manner. We would later learn that Uluru is split into many sacred sites. Some are for men, some for women, and some for all the people.
With the shape of the structure a significant amount of rain collects here. These leaves the 'gorges' and 'valleys' a verdant green, especially compared to the surrounding desert. Combined with the red lobular structure of the structure it's a beautiful place. Personally I actually preferred it to Uluru, but then again I prefer biology to geology.
With the water and greenery must also have drawn significant numbers of animals too. This would explain why it was such a good place to teach young men how to find water and hunting.
We walked through and over the valleys of Kata Tjuta up to a viewing point. It was early in the morning and HOT. 4km didn't take too long thankfully, yet we still huddled under each bit of shade we found. Coming back we met some poor idiots walking in after 9am with less than a half litre of water. And that's how folks get in trouble here. I did 2 litres whilst climbing about it, as did most of the group.
Afterwards we went to the air conditioned Aboriginal Cultural Centre. Here we learnt about their oral law, language, customs, arts, and way of life from the myriad of displays on offer. There was even a display of women creating the dot art that the central Australian Aboriginal nations are famous for.
After lunch at noon it had become far too hot to do anything sensible. Hence we spent the afternoon in a cold water swimming pool, under the cover of trees, next to a camel farm. Most of the group was there, plus a couple of locals. We chatted away talking about some of the most random and ropey subjects available- not helped by having an ER nurse, and ER nurse's daughter, a vet nurse, and a vet, on hand. Ladies and gents, we've seen some weird stuff.
Having cooled off and scared the locals with story time it was nearly sunset. We pre-prepared everything for dinner then headed out.
First stop was a drive around all of Uluru- an 8km drive. Yes, it's not far to walk, but if it's light here then the temperature is well over 30C. Not as easy as plan B- do half tonight and a wee bit more tomorrow morning.
As we circled our guide explained a few of the important parts of the rock. The Aboriginal tie all of there stories to parts of the landscape. For example the fire story we learnt in Tully contained reference to a local hill that appears to have been split in two. All of their stories are about shape shifters who took the forms of an human and an animal and could change size. At Uluru there are rocks that are eggs left by a giant snake woman, scars formed after a battle, and a totem pole of stone. It would take ages for me to pass on a minor amount of this information. Our guide had to do a two week course to be officially allowed to tell us what he knows, and that's minimal compared to what the Elders know.
Most of this evening's walk was about a few sacred sites. There were sites for teaching children or young men and a sacred cave for giving birth. The teaching caves and areas displayed instructional art drawn by ancestors. The walls were used as a form of black board to write out ideas for the young to learn. Each cave is relatively cool and sheltered. This helped in the heat of the day- a good time to escape and to teach.
At the sunset viewing point there were hundreds of older people (cruise ship age) all from one tour company. They had a few acres of clean tables set up with champagne and nibbles, were dressed appropriately, and quietly enjoying themselves. Then we arrived in our purple minibus, dressed in whatever, slightly sweaty, with a fold up table, crackers and dip, plastic flute glasses, and 4 bottles of sparkling wine. We had much more fun than them- or at least we laughed and shouted more. We even out did the 18-20 year olds that arrived off a big Contiki coach. Oh, and sunset. I'm into sunset as much as I am sunrise. Sorry, not so fussed. Although Uluru changed colour somewhat as it got darker. That was worth a few pictures.
Back at camp it was time for a proper Aussie barbie! I volunteered to cook whilst the others sorted veg or later cleaned. This was enjoyable but deciding to stand by fire in a desert whilst in a small steel shed wasn't one of my smarter moves. I sweated buckets as my 60s playlist rang out from my phone and the various invertebrates danced about our lightbulb before kamikazing towards the hot plate. Potatoes, sweet corn cobs, onions and mushrooms, sausages, burgers, and kangaroo. It was a challenge a ran at and hammered out a feast for 25 people. Sadly there were only 13 of us though. Hence there's now a large pack of cold meats chilling with some ice in the trailer, ready for tomorrow.
It was an odd night for bugs. Large black beetles were everywhere. One couldn't help but stand on multitudes. There were cockroaches, giant green grasshoppers, little preying mantis, odd shield bug too. We painted Raid across the doorways which slightly helped. Still a lot to sweep up the next day though.
That night we wre back out in swags. I drank about 4 litres between barbecuing and bed. Nearly enough to get me towards 'normal'. I was exhausted.
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