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Published: August 4th 2005
We're just back from a fantastic 3 days in the outback visiting Australia's most iconic attraction - Uluru, or Ayres Rock as it's commonly known, as well as the Olgas and King's Canyon, and experiencing a bit of outback life, and it was great!
We started from Alice Springs very early on Monday morning, as Uluru is a 5 hour drive from Alice. Our first afternoon was spent doing the base walk around the rock; the local Aboriginal tribes discourage people from climbing it as it's a sacred site to them, but plenty of people still do the climb. We decided not to partly out of respect for the locals, and partly because it's bloody steep and we weren't sure that we were feeling that energetic! The base walk was enough exercise for the first day! After our walk we drove to the 'sunset viewing point', along with every other tourist in the area - it was mobbed. Our guide Angus provided us with bubbly and nibbles which entertained us as we waited for sunset, along with his elbowing a group of German teenagers out of the way of our group because we were there first and they were hogging
the best photo places... All's fair in love and the best photo opportunities! Uluru changes colour dramatically as the sun sets, from bright orange to burnt rust to dusky red to black, it was pretty cool.
Back at our campsite Graeme was put in charge of the barbie and we ate a good dinner before getting out our sleeping bags ready for bed. Graeme and I along with a few others opted to sleep in 'swags', big canvas sleeping bags with mattresses in them, under the stars. The night sky was spectacular - it was great sleeping outside and surprisingly cosy in our swags.
We were up at 5.30 the next morning to get back to Uluru for sunrise. It was another circus with people jostling all over the place to get the best photo... Again it was pretty spectacular. We then went to the Olgas, 1/2 an hour from Uluru, another sandstone formation which looks like giant marbles. We trecked round the Olgas to a viewpoint over the desert, and decided that they were even more spectacular than the rock.
That afternoon we drove to King's Canyon, a 3 hour drive, to our second campsite. After
Graeme cookin'
There really is food on the barbie!another night under the stars we were up at 5.30 (again!) to walk around the canyon. This was even more spectacular than the other two places we'd seen - a mini version of the Grand Canyon in the USA. We liked King's Canyon so much that after walking round it, we did a scenic helicopter ride over it - fantastic! You get a totally different perspective from in the air, and the helicopter ride was pretty cool :-) The only difficult part was not rubbing it in with the people in our group who didn't do the helicopter tour...
We got back to Alice at tea time, exhausted, filthy and covered in red dust. We were so glad of a hot shower before going to a local bar to meet our group for dinner. This morning we flew to Perth and were sad to leave the red centre behind - it was like nowhere we've ever been before and we had a fab time.
Till the next time
love Jo and Graeme x
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