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Camp Site
Bright and early, and ready to move out. Day 2: We were up early on our second day in the Outback, around 6:30am. It’s nice to get up in the Outback before the sun rises, because as soon as it does, the millions and millions of flies swarm around you. After rolling up our swags and eating a quick breakfast, we were on the road again, heading to our next destination. On the way, we stopped for some good, old-fashioned grub digging! Luckly for us, we didn’t find any so we didn’t have to eat any!! Haha
We arrived in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park around 9:40am, and got our first glimpse of Uluru!! Uluru is the largest monolithic (single rock) structure in the world. It appears red due to the high level of iron in the sand of the Outback. It is of great cultural significance to the Aboriginal tribe of the area. Instead of heading straight for Uluru, we were going to first visit Kata Tjuta. Kata Tjutu is an Aboriginal word meaning “many heads” and is a group of 36 massive rocks. It also is of great cultural significance to the local Aboriginals and, like Uluru, contains many “sacred sites”,
On the road to Kata
Grub Digging
Hillary hasn't found anything, but she's having fun anyways. Tjuta, we saw two spiky lizards called Thorny Devils. Greg lifted them up for us. We arrived at Kata Tjuta around 10:30am and did a 7.4km (3 hour) walk around the rocks. Again, we did this walk in blazing heat, but the experience was incredible. We took so many amazing pictures!! And this walk was much easier than the last because it wasn’t as hilly. The walk was also a bit cooler since trekking through the Valley of the Winds gave us a bit of shade and as the name implies, cooled us with a light breeze. Lol
After checking out a viewing platform to get some different angles of Kata Tjuta, we went over to Uluru to have a late lunch and visit the information centre. Making lunch is always a team effort, since we make a buffet style sandwich line. The annoying part is trying to eat while you have 20 flies hovering around you and landing on your food while you’re lifting it to your mouth. It was extremely frustrating, but now we can look back on it and laugh. The information centre explained much of the cultural importance of Uluru and Kata Tjuta from the
Grub Digging - 2
I seem to be really getting into it. point of view of the Aboriginals. We read the different stories on about how the rock formations came to be. The stories usually contained mystical creatures, giant lizards, and moral lessons to learn from.
Next we toured a bit of the base and listened to Greg tell us more about the history and the stories from the Ananu people (word to self-describe the Aboriginal people). We checked out some of the caves and shelters, all which used to be occupied by the local Aboriginal people. Currently, the government is leasing the land from the Aboriginal people, and one day the rights will return to the original owners.
Once the sun started setting, we quickly made our way to the sunset viewing area. This was a big parking lot with the best views for the sun setting and changing the colour of Uluru to bright red. Lots of people with different tours were all lined up to take in the sight. Unfortunately, rain clouds showed up just in time to block out the sun! In a place where it almost never rain, it actually rained! Lol But it did mean we got to see a sight rarer than the
Uluru View
Uluru in sight! Also known as Ayers Rock. typical sunset colour transformation… lightning and Uluru! It wasn’t struck, but seeing Uluru during a thunderstorm was just as good.
That night we stopped into the local campground to rest. Luckily the rain had stopped, so we could sleep outside just like the night before. The benefit of the campground meant that there were proper washrooms all around, and the majority of our group took advantage of this to take much needed showers before catching a few Zs. Lol
Hillary (and Kevin)
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