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Published: September 10th 2011
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I was up early to be picked up by my tour. I met Florent and Stephanie at my hostel who were coming on the same tour and the 3 of us hit it off straight away. Florent is from France and Stephanie is from Germany.
We had an interesting mix of people in group. Some older people and a few younger ones. We started heading out of Alice towards Uluru. We stopped to see "fooluru" but it was too smokey to see it. Fooluru is another big rock in the desert that looks similar to Uluru from one side and when they first opened up Uluru as a tourist thing people would get confused and think this place was Uluru and take their pictures and turn back to Alice Springs.
It was so smokey because of fire stick farming which is how the aboriginals maintain the land. They burn off sections of the land to start regrowth. A lot of the trees here are fireproof. It's actually really interesting. The land gets better with fire.
As we kept driving our driver told us more stories about the area. Then in the distance you could just start to see
the familiar shape of Uluru in the distance. It was so cool to see.
We stopped in the purpose built tourist town of Yulara to have lunch and drop off our camping stuff. We then headed over to the information center which is also a cultural center about the people of the area. It was a really interesting place to walk around and learn.
We drove over to Uluru to do the base walk. The aboriginal people who are the owners of this land would prefer you not to climb up Uluru. However, you still can. It was closed the day we were there due to high wind but even if it was opened I don't believe in climbing it. This is a very spiritual place to them.
Something I learnt on this trip was the song Beds are burning by Midnight oil was a song written in protest. The song is being told from the aboriginal side saying that we should be giving them back their land. Intersting! And the guy who wrote the song is now in a political position that has some power over the area and he sided with the aboriginals back then
Canada $1 bill
I didn't even remember what these looked like!!! to give it back to them but has decided to keep the climb open even though the aboriginals don't want you to. Interesting!
Anyways, we started doing the base walk around Uluru. It was so hot out! You can't take pictures in certain areas because they are spiritually sensitive. We walked just about the whole way around which is far but all flat. The rock is so different on the other side. The black marks on the rock are from water running down the rock when it's raining or during storms.
Our tour guide then showed us some rock art and a water hole which is where the first rock climb happened. We then drove over to the sunset viewing area. The tour company provides us all with champagne as we watch the rock change colours in the sun.
It was really pretty to see the sunset. We drove back to our campsite and made dinner. A delicious stirfry. There were heaps of little mice running around all over our campsite. So cute and fast! We also saw a couple of bunnies.
We had a fire and socialized for a bit and then rolled our swags
out and settled in for the night. The starry sky above was amazing to fall asleep under!
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Mommy
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what a place
I am glad you were able to do this tour. The stories are the special part. We can all read about it but to be there is magical. Is there a lot of erosion?