Rock On!

So, from Darwin I travelled to Perth in Western Australia. Not a great deal of excitement there, but don't get me wrong: Perth was a nice city. Very cosmopolitan I thought, and great to just wander around looking at the place, or walking along its waterfront and park areas.

After spending a couple of days in Perth, I travelled to Alice Springs for what something I have been seriously looking forward to - visiting Uluru - a.k.a. Ayres Rock.

Although Alice Springs, as a town was designed as a base to which you could explore Uluru and its environs, the designers made one crucial error: Alice Springs is bloody miles away from Uluru! A good 4 to 5 hour drive, so figuring this, I decided on a 2 day/1 night tour that spend the night close-ish (well, closer than Alice Springs anyway!) to the main aforementioned attraction.

The first day was a 6am start to get to the first stopping point - Kings Canyon. This was a very pretty area with stunning vistas across the vast outback. There I partook in a three hour walk over 6kms to the apex of the canyons walls and down the other side again. There were incredible rock formations, sheer cliffs and an oasis running through the canyon floor (known as The Garden of Eden - as its name suggests it was idyllic), all in all beautiful.

It was supposed to be a fairly dangerous place what with the extreme heat, steep climbs and cliffs, and the constant, relentless and inexorable annoyance of the flies buzzing around my face - many a tourist has perished in these parts. Our guide told us the tale of an ill-fated young French girl, too occupied with looking at her surroundings through her camcorder to notice the presence of a 100 metre drop in the landscape and was henceforth killed on impact with the hard, hard rock below.

From Kings Canyon I was left at my lodgings for the night and after a tasty repast, retired shattered. The following day was to be the main event, the top of the bill, the cream of the cr...well you get the idea.

I travelled first to The Olgas (now known by their aboriginal name: Kata Tjuta). This was totally incredible to see. After a brief walk, we travelled to Uluru itself.

The site (yet another UNESCO World Heritage site!) was renamed Uluru from Ayres Rock when it was handed back to the aboriginal people. Walking around Uluru was amazing, I had no idea until then of all the various tales that go with the various parts of the rock. Like in one place there was a makeshift classroom, with drawings on the wall from the various elders, in another place the aboriginal women would place themselves if they failed to get pregnant so that the spiritual powers could work their magic (although if their bloke was a jaffa, theres nowt doing I shouldn't think!). Just so many stories and history it was amazing.

After a couple or walks at various sites we retired to a nearby location to watch the sunset over champagne and barbecue sausages. This was amazing, the complete and utter change in colours of Uluru as the sun was setting was amazing. Within the space of literally ten minutes, the rock would have changed from a fierce red to a purple hue, just beautiful.

The sights of both Kata Tjuta and Uluru as you see them driving up towards them were just incredible. The sheer immense size of these sites was awe inspiring simply because of the way they stood out from the land that surrounded them. The colour of these rocks was just amazing with the deep reds contrasting to the deep blues of the sky. Beautiful.

Here I am at Uluru:



On the way back to Alice Springs I saw the stars. Some of the best stars you could ever wish to see. Living where I do back home, you never really get to see the stars properly as the light glare from surrounding conurbations of Durham and Newcastle renders the sky impotent at exposing its prize jewels. In the outback, with the nearest large population 500kms away, you can see everything, distant galaxies glowing in the night sky, constellations within constellations that you didn't know even existed (take the Orion constellation, you wouldn't believe how many other stars there are within it that you never get to see) just incredible.

All in all, superb. Seeing these things of such cultural importance and awe-inspiring grandeur was totally incredible. An absolute must see!