Okay, surely you associate the word “outback” with the country of Australia. I mean, Outback Steakhouse, right? Bahahaha. Well, when we decided to visit the Aussies, we did so with very little idea as to where we would go besides Sydney. I did a little search of two-ish week itineraries in Australia, and I found one I really liked. It recommended a visit to both Darwin, way up north in the middle of the country, and Uluru, a town and landmark smack dab in the Red Center. After a little more research, I decided Uluru sounded more exciting.
The pain is, there is very little civilization in the outback, which makes public transit a non-starter. Trying to drive on the left side of the road also seemed like a bad idea, and it was also hard to tell what exactly there was to do in the area and how to get there. So, I found some multi-day tours of the area, and I booked one the same night The Boy booked all our domestic flights. Thank goodness we did so.
The only thing I really knew about this place, Uluru, was that it was centered around a giant red rock of the same name. I was tickled, then, when we flew right over the top of it as we came in for a landing.
It was crazy to see the absolute nothing surrounding this rock. Shed a lot of light on the idea of this rock being sacred to the Aboriginal people. If there’s nothing around but this rock for miles and miles, one’s bound to think it’s pretty dang special.
Our flight landed a bit early, and we were welcomed by an email saying our tour bus wouldn’t pick us up until 12:45, rather than the expected noon. This meant we had about two and a half hours to kill, in one of the smallest airports we’ve ever been in. The airport was basically made up of an arrivals room and a departures room, separated by a wall and a short walk outside. The arrivals room was supplied with rental car companies, but it lacked any food stores or toilets.
Australia has a very strange practice of not ever checking passports for domestic flights, and they only check boarding passes as you are entering the plane. This means one can go all the way to a departure gate without actually having a plane to catch. So, we went through the empty security line, hit the loo, and bought some lunch.
We had met a chatty old Australian man in Port Douglas who had warned us that the flies in this area are bad. Because it’s so dry, he said they are constantly trying to fly into your ears, nose, and mouth for moisture. I really wished he hadn’t said this, but even more so, I wished he hadn’t been right. Imagine our disappointment, then, when we went back to the arrivals gate to wait out our bus and were constantly swatting at the same flies he had warned of. I decided to use my scarf as a headwrap to keep them out of my ears, but the flies were paying extra attention to The Boy, and I eventually pitied his swatting dance moves and pacing enough to bequeath my shield.
We loaded onto our bus soon enough. It was a 21 seater, but there were only 17 of us. A good sized group for three days together. I challenged myself to learn everyone’s names, and I very narrowly succeeded by the end!
Our first stop was the Aboriginal cultural center. This area was not reached by white man until the late 1800s, and tourism did not spring up here until the 1950s. This means that the Aboriginal people who have been living in this area for tens of thousands of years only recently had their world shaken apart. Just thirty years ago, though, they were able to reclaim their land from the Australian government. This cultural center tells the story of that land hand back and of many Aboriginal stories surrounding the rock formations in the area. No pictures, though! Plenty more to come.
We did a very important thing at the cultural center, which was to visit the little shop to buy fly nets for our heads. They really were life changing.
Our next stop was a lookout at Kata Tjuta. Turns out, Uluru isn’t the only big rock in the area. It has a neighbor rock that was broken into 36 pieces as it sprouted from the earth during the Alice Springs Orogeny some 350 million years ago. Just a warning that from here on out, almost all of our pictures will be slightly obscured by our fly nets. Other people were silly enough to take their nets off for picture, swatting frantically in between snaps and then hurriedly tucking back into them. I was no such fool.
Jonathan described my netting as “kind of messy, but also really regal.” I honestly don’t know how I would describe his.
Bahahahhahahahaha.
The nets plus the sun also made it really hard to see what I was taking pictures of, so as I’m writing this, I’m seeing most of my pictures for the first time.
Oh, and check out the brave elbow of our friend Dr. Phil, a young (single!) emergency doctor on our tour.
*shivers*
After our lookout, we drove in closer to “get among it.” It was about 103 degrees at this point, and the sun was beating down relentlessly. It made our short little hike into the rocks feel like quite the endeavor. We were all quiet in our exhaustion.
We did get some very pretty views, though. And surprisingly, we found some water!
Jonathan was brave (and silly) enough to try a pose sans-net.
But let me just show you how CRAY CRAY these flies can get. This is the back of our guide, Ken, who refused to wear a fly net for the whole trip:
Wowz. Erz.
After dragging our feet back to the bus, we made a quick route around the rocks to another spot. People were soooo reluctant to get out of the air-conned bus again for another walk in the heat. I myself wondered if I would suffer from heat stroke, and I forced myself to keep drinking more and more water to stave off this worry.
This walk was shorter than the last, and several people stayed behind. We walked up to the trailhead of a longer hike which posted warnings of closure past 11am or if the temperature was about 36 degrees Celsius. It was about 3pm and 43 degrees Celsius by this point. No wonder we were dying.
Jonathan and I attempted another fly net-free photo. It didn’t work very well, and I hastily re-donned the net.
These flies really are bananas, and I learned my lesson after that Check out the colony of flies on The Poor Bo below.
Thankful to be on the bus again, we drove back to Uluru to see one of its famous sunsets. As the sun dips close to the horizon, its rays travel through extra atmosphere and the red light really comes out. Red rock plus red light equals even redder rock, theoretically. Unfortunately, the clouds rolled in from the west just before sunset, so we got to look at brown rock and purple rock.
The light really did change the color of the rock, though. Just look at these pictures taken six minutes apart, one with the clouds obscuring the sun, and the other where the sun decided to peek out for a minute:
Ken whipped us up a ginormous wok of chow mein as the sun set. It was delicious, but it was also kind of hard to eat hot food when all I wanted was a glass of ice cold lemonade. We had depleted our cooler of ice water, so I actually broke down and bought a beer from Ken, as they’d been sitting on ice all day. It was not only the first beer I’ve ever consumed in full, but it was the first beer I have ever enjoyed. Crazy what the heat can do to a girl!
When we returned to camp, we did a round of introductions and hit the showers as lightning lit up the sky. A few girls went to see the Field of Lights, an art installation out in the desert. Part of me wanted to join, but part of me reeeaaaalllyy wanted to sleep, and the latter part one. This probably was due to the fact that we had recently been informed of our 4:20am wake-up time. Oof.
We were given military-grade canvas sleeping bags called “swags” to sleep in, with a normal sleeping bag for comfort, and then we were told to “sleep wherever you like.” Our options included a three-person, three-walled canvas shed, a long three-walled metal shed, or the open ground under the storm clouds. Everybody else chose the long shed, but there wasn’t any space by the time we got set up for bed, so we had the canvas shed to ourselves. The thing is, the canvas wasn’t was split in the middle and the top half wasn’t secured down at all, so when it rained in the middle of the night, the flaps opened with the wind and let rain shower our faces in short bursts. It was so hot that it actually felt good.
In the morning, the first thing The Boy said to me was, “Happy Valentine’s Day.” I had a, “Huh?” moment before realizing that yep, it sure was that day! We zombied together for some breakfast before heading back out to Uluru to catch the sunrise. Ken played some punk rock Valentine’s Day song in celebration.
The flies woke up the second a touch of light hit the sky, but luckily, we did get a bit of the red rock views we were promised, just before the sun went behind more clouds and the rock turned brown again.
^That picture is blurry because we were trying to dodge the flies. It’s a nasty game. Hahahaha.
With our nets safely back on our heads, we could even peek at Kata Tjuta in the distance.
Our main event for the day was the Uluru base walk – nine kilometers in the heat around the entirety of Uluru, with nothing but our thoughts and the flies for company. Do you see the Mala Man in the rock below? He’s facing to the left!
I had come prepared in my life-changing long-sleeved swim suit for the occasion to wick away the sweat and protect me from that nasty sun, and Jonathan was also in long sleeves.
Dude. I did some research on UV indexes. On this day in Seattle, the UV index was 0.8, or “low.” Anything above 3 necessitates sun protection. UV index in Uluru for this day? FIFTEEN. Most charts top out at 10+ in the category of “extreme.” It almost never gets above 6 in the peak of Seattle Summer. So yeah, I was not messing around. Jonathan had learned his lesson on that partly cloudy (but still UV index 10) beach day in Sydney, and for the first time ever, I was not having to sneak sunscreen onto his face. He applied liberally every couple hours without my guidance. So proud!
I had been skeptical of this base walk. I mean, I get it. It’s a cool rock, and it doesn’t make any sense that it’s here, but I felt no need to see it up close from All The Angles.
It ended up being really cool, though. There are lots of features on the face of the rock and at the base of it that you just can’t see from afar. Almost all of these features have some cultural significance to the Aboriginal people, and Ken supplied us with many stories before sending us off. Some of these features hold extra significance for the Aboriginals, and they are used for special ceremonies and activities. These six areas were called “sensitive sites,” and they are not to be photographed. Don’t worry, though. Plenty of cool rock things to show you without those.
Ken sent us off for six kilometers, and I strongly believe that each one of us questioned our ability to make it at one point or another. We were walking clockwise around the rock starting at the northwest corner, so we were walking directly into the sun. The light bounced off my lightly colored fly net so that unless I shielded my netting with my hand, I literally couldn’t see anything. I ran into a bush and a tree and narrowly missed many other obstacles, all while getting well aquatinted with our unrelenting fly friends.
When Ken finally met up with us again and I silently cursed him for abandoning us for longer than his promised “hour or so,” he told us one of the most memorable stories about the rock. Legend has it that a Kuniya woman, a type of snake, was nesting on the other side of the rock when she heard that her nephew had been killed by a group of Liru, or poisonous brown snakes. She performed a powerful dance and struck one of the Liru warriors, leaving a gash in the rock face. He only taunted her more, so she struck him a second time, leaving a larger gash, and he was killed, dropping his shield at the bottom of the rock. The Kuniya woman remains coiled here for eternity.
Ken also took us to see the Mititjulu watering hole and demonstrated how this was a place of gathering for animals as well as people. There was still some water remaining from the recent rains, and you could see the path the waterfall would take if it was running.
Ken showed us cave drawings nearby, and we hunkered gratefully in the shade.
Then he set us off again. I was starving at this point, so Jonathan and I ran back to the van with him to grab a snack and refill our water. Then we walked quickly to catch up again with the group. I didn’t think I could make it, but Ken said it was only twenty minutes, so I told myself to be strong.
We finally hit some shade on this portion of the walk, and when we met up with Ken once more, he had snacks waiting. This didn’t stop me from also buying a cold drink and a popsicle from a snack stand in the parking lot.
We were stopped near the Uluru climb trailhead. We could see a long white path snaking up the steep rock face and over the hump beyond to more path length that we could not see. The climb had been taking place for several decades, against the wishes of the Aboriginal people. They believe the rock is sacred and that this climb was massively disrespectful. Just this past October, the climb was officially closed for good, and the climbing chain was removed. It was a long-awaited victory for the local Aboriginal people.
When Ken told us there was still more walking to do, everyone’s eyes widened a bit. Nobody wanted to leave the van, and many had thought this was our finish line. You can imagine how slow moving we were as we trudged, this time with Ken leading the way, back towards the rock. We stooped in a marvelous cave shaped like a wave as Ken regaled us with more stories.
Then he sent us off to another watering hole and water fall view point. Everybody mustered up what strength they had left for our 840 meter round-trip trek, and literal cheers of joy were expended when we reached the end of the path. One of the Irish girls, Teresa, exclaimed, “Oh, this is amazing!” I thought she was talking about the view of the watering hole, but then she followed it up with, “That wasn’t even five minutes!”
Then, finally, nine kilometers later, it was time to pile back into the van to head out to lunch. We bid adieu to Uluru, and within fifteen minutes, everybody was asleep.
More outback (and Valentine’s Day) adventures to come.
Venlig hilsen/cheers,
-Lizzy-wa