Uluru

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Day 146-148

29^th-31^stJanuary

This blog is dedicated to my Grandma. She always wanted to go to Uluru and loved looking at these photos and hearing all about it when we returned. We miss you every day. xxx



We had an early flight the next day to Uluru and Wade and Melissa had really kindly offered to drive us to Sydney Airport which was really cool of them because we had to leave the house at 6am! We were all fairly quiet on the way there and it was a bit of a sad goodbye to them both at the airport. The world is a big place and who knows when we will meet again?



We really got an idea of how freaking big Australia is on our flight to Uluru. Its 1347 miles away and the flight took nearly 3 hours. It was a whole different world when we got off the plane. We’d left Sydney in the mid twenties and it was a bit of a grey day, in Uluru it was a sweltering 40 degrees and absolute blazing sunshine. It was quite disorientating! We got our backpacks and walked outside to where there were lots of coaches to take people to the Ayers Rock Resort. The Ayers Rock Resort is a collection of hotels and shops near to Uluru. It has sprung up to accommodate all the visitors to Uluru. The nearest town otherwise is Alice Springs which is 400 miles away. As time was of the essence to us, we had decided to spend a little more money and stay in the resort. It also saved us a very long and uncomfortable journey from Alice Springs to Uluru. We’d had to break our rule of not staying in a dorm though because a private room was $500 for 2 nights which was ridiculous!!! We managed to get 2 beds in a 4 bed dorm for $300 for 3 nights which wasn’t brilliant but had to do. This place that was taking our money was the Outback Pioneer hotel, so we jumped on the bus that would take us there, got to the hotel very quickly and checked in. Luckily we had the dorm to ourselves for 2 out of the 3 nights and the couple that joined us for the final night were very nice so it wasn’t too bad!



The resort was such a strange place, it really was in the middle of nowhere with all the building in a circle and a patch of the desert in the middle which you could cut across to get to the other hotels and shops. We spent the first day getting acclimatised to the heat and getting used to the large numbers of red back spiders we saw everywhere! A little unnerving… However we loved the restaurant they had there. You bought yourself some meat or fish and then there were loads of gas BBQs to cook them on. Then you could help yourself to as much potatoes, veg, salad etc, it was awesome.



The next day was the day of our tour. For the second part of our wedding present, my grandparents had bought us a tour of Uluru and Ellory and I had decided to go with a company called APT for a Base walk, a trip to the cultural centre and then watching the sunset over Uluru with drinks and nibbles. The coach picked us up at half two and drove us out to Uluru where we started our walk at Mutitjulu, a waterhole at the base of Uluru. We learned about the Aboriginal legends of Uluru, namely the legend of Kuniya Tjukurpa (Python Dreaming) and how Uluru came to be. We also learned the geographical way of how Uluru was formed, which was not nearly as poetic as the aboriginal way! We also saw a lot of cave paintings which was amazing as some of them were very old. Our very knowledgeable guide was full of lots of interesting facts and stories about Uluru and Ellory and I were just overwhelmed with the sheer size and beauty of it. It was truly a beautiful place and I hope our photos did it justice. Uluru is a very sacred place to the Aboriginals and it is still used for a lot of their customs and ceremonies. For that reason, although they are ok with visitors, they do request that visitors do not photograph certain parts of it, and they definitely do not like people to climb it. The number of people we saw taking pictures of the sacred sites was unbelievable, some people have no respect. Fortunately no one climbed Uluru while we were there and that was for a very good reason. It was over 50 degrees in direct sunlight and the walk was closed as it was far too dangerous. The Aboriginals grieve heavily when anyone dies climbing Uluru (it has happened many times) which is why they ask visitors to just come and look. Believe me, that is more than enough, there is so much to marvel at and appreciate from the ground.



After our walk, we were absolutely sweating and piled back into the coach to be taken to the Uluru-Kata Tjuta Cultural Centre and Maruka Arts and Craft Cooperative. The name explains it all really; it was an exhibition of the Aboriginals, their laws and customs. It was really interesting to learn more about them, we had come across some prejudice against them while we were in Australia and it was good to see and read about their lives. Afterwards we went and had a look at the Arts and Craft Cooperative and ended up buying a Aboriginal painting of Kuniya, which we managed to bring safely back to the UK, is now hanging on our wall in our house and is a lovely reminder of our trip.



Next was time for the sunset, something we had both really been looking forward to. There is a dedicated ‘sunset viewing’ point where all the coaches gather in the evening. Our company had set up a table with lots of bottles of wine and snacks for us to enjoy. The wine was very much enjoyed!!! They had provided seats as well and Ellory and I got ourselves a good vantage point and settled down to watch the colours change over Uluru. We had a lovely chat with some of the couples around us, they were all much older but were also celebrating their married lives together. (40^th wedding anniversary etc) and we all had a great time knocking back the wine and taking lots of photos.



It was such a beautiful end to the day and when we returned to the hotel we carried on drinking at the bar and ended up meeting lots of people and having a really fun (terribly drunken) evening! Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for this beautiful wedding present it was really an unbelievable experience.



Our final day was spent relaxing at Uluru and catching up with various things before our long day of flights the next day (Cairns via Sydney)

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