Uluru

Hello Friends & Family! So sorry it's been awhile. We're going to try to catch-up the blog and then keep up with it from now on. Unfortunately, the blog enforces integrity and I can't back-date it, so we'll just pop the month and year at the top ... it may go a bit out of order as well, but we'll get up to date!


June 2007 - Uluru (Ayers Rock)

Our first night in the middle of the country we went on a camel-ride to sunset. Upon arriving at the camel centre we read up on the history of camels in Australia. They arrived in numbers for the building of the railroads. Once complete, their handlers were ordered to destroy them, but they couldn't bring themselves to - so, they were released into the wild. Today Australia has the largest population of wild camels of anywhere in the world. In fact, exporting tamed camels is quite big business! Of course, there had to be a first camel, and we've posted the story below:
If the resolution of that isn't clear, I'll sum it up. The lone camel accompanied an exploratory mission. Unfortunately, the camel was put down due to his 'alleged' involvement in the death of the leader.

We thought perhaps this was a misprint, so we asked our tour leader who explained that, in fact, the camel was blamed for the gun going off and the dying man's last words were "the camel did it" ... or something like that.

Anyway, on to the ride!


That night we went to a 'bbq it yourself' place:



The next morning, we got up REALLY early to see the sunrise over Uluru. It was chilly as well, around 3C.


When the sun came up it was worth it.

From there, we went to the Aboriginal cultural centre where we met with our guide, Elsie, and our translator, James. We leaned about life in the bush and spiritual teachings.

After our lessons, we took off on our own to walk around the base of the rock. It's a long 9km around, but there are so many interesting bits to see, and it looks really different up close. This 1/2 'tunnel' is in the base of the rock - and it's HUGE!

Later that night we had what would be one of our most memorable dinners in Australia. It was called the sounds of silence dinner and as you can tell, it was outdoors under the stars. The food was great, the temp a bit cold but the dining room made up for that. The dinner was capped with an astronomy lesson featuring the southern sky. Using a giant spotlight, we were able to identify that elusive southern cross.

The next day we headed out to the Olgas - another rock formation some 70k away. After our short car ride, we made for a day long hike within the Olgas. While the nights were cold, the days were anything but. By early afternoon, we were quite exhausted.

Some friends told us not to miss another feature in the middle of nowhere. We headed our car into the outback brush and after a three hour drive through absolutely nothing, we arrived in Kings Canyon. The canyon, unlike Uluru, is made of sandstone. Over many thousands of years, the sands shifted, settled and created these huge rock formations. Water eroded some of those formations leaving behind deep canyons. We did a day hike over and through the canyons on the lookout for roos and other local wildlife.
I never would have expected the middle of the outback - the middle of nothing - to be so interesting, so beautiful and so memorable.