Uluru/Kata Tjuta

Round trip from Alice Springs – 1.100 km/683 miles

Of course, I didn't travel 3.720km just to look at Alice Springs in the rain. I'm guessing that I'm not the only one for whom the town of Alice Springs and Ayers Rock are inextricably linked. I'm hoping that I'm not the only one who didn't realise that they're not exactly right next to each other.

Options for visiting Uluru (to give Ayers Rock its traditional, and now correct, name) are somewhat limited. The only accommodation at the rock itself is at the purpose-built resort of Yulara which, as befits a monopoly supplier in the middle of nowhere, charges an arm and a leg (and quite a lot of money as well) for even the most basic of accommodation. The next nearest place to stay is the Curtin Springs campsite around 85 km from the rock. The next nearest, well, isn't.

I opted to stay in Alice Springs and take a day trip to the rock. Now, if you're like me and think that the two are quite close together, than you're in for a reality check. Of course, all things are relative, and in the Outback, Alice and Uluru are quite close together, but they're still 500km apart. The day trip begins at 06:00 and finishes (in winter) at about 23:00.

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This is what the front lawn of Lasseters Hotel in Alice Springs looks like at 06:00 in the rain. I know they're on timers, but it still seemed quite surreal that the sprinklers were running:

Luckily the rain had stopped before we got to the rock itself. You can see in this picture, taken at the rest stop at Erldunda Roadhouse that it was hard to see much through the windows because of the condensation. The driver tried getting us to stop breathing, but it didn't last.

Yes – the tour company was called “Emu Run”. I've no idea why and I forgot to ask.

There was great excitement when this was glimpsed out of the bus window – and we stopped to take pictures:

But the excitement was premature. Despite frequently being mistaken for Uluru, this is Mount Conner, sometimes called “Fooluru”. Apparently in the days before tourism was as well established as it is now, people would come out from Alice (on dirt roads) and climb Mount Conner, thinking it was Ayers Rock. The town's chemists were often the ones to break the bad news when giving back developed photographs.

Moving on, we finally spotted the real thing:

Now, something else that I hope I wasn't alone in realising is that Uluru isn't the only ancient structure in the centre of Australia. Nearby, and of greater spiritual importance to the native population, are what used to be called the Olgas, now properly called Kata Tjuta - “many heads” in the local Pitjantjatjara language. You can see why in the banner picture at the top of the page.

Much of Kata Tjuta is closed to visitors and at especially important times to the Anangu people, access to the whole area can be restricted. As it is, the Walpa Gorge and the Valley of the Winds are generally open. Our tour included time in the Walpa Gorge, which is the largest gap more or less in the middle:

The gorge progressively narrows as you walk along it:

Looking up at the sides of the valley, you can see where weathering over the centuries has created numerous caves and indentations in the surface.

The valley generally has moisture in it and there are always plants and even small trees. When we visited, the streams were flowing quite actively. The black stripes you can see on the rocks are caused by algae which are active when there is surface water. What is much less common is this view:

Which shows the view looking away from Kata Tjuta across the plain which is much greener than usual.

After leaving Kata Tjuta we headed back to Uluru and made an all too brief stop at the Cultural Centre. The building is in the shape of two, intertwined snakes and contains a wealth of information about Uluru and Kata Tjuta. This covers the geological explanation of their existence and their European history, as well as the Aboriginal history – part of the Tjukurpa, the collection of stories passed on from generation to generation explaining how the features of the world came to be and what the place of humans is within it. For cultural reasons, you're not allowed to take any photographs within, or even of, the centre itself. Uluru means “meeting place” in Pitjantjatjara and the rock is of importance to many different tribes of Aborigine.

By now, it was time to get up close with the rock itself. This was what we'd got up at stupid o'clock to visit. From a distance, and in most of the photographs you see of it, Uluru appears to be a largely smooth, and fairly regular inverted-loaf sort of shape. From close to, you can see that there are numerous indentations, caves, scars and gullies.

One of my favourite stories from the Tjukurpa is one of the ones that concerns the creation of the rock. It seems that there was to be a meeting of the men of the clan. Two boys were dragged along, but were too young to participate, so they whiled away the time playing in a nearby pool of water. As the meeting dragged on and on, the boys got more and more bored and they ended up having a mud fight at the edge of the pool. After a while, they realised that all the mud they'd thrown had formed a huge pile so they climbed up the pile and then launched themselves down it, digging their toes and fingers in to help slow themselves down. The mud pile, of course, is what we now see as Uluru, and you can still see the scores the boys left with their toes and fingers. Look at this picture and tell me you can't:

There are several places around the rock where visitors are asked not to take photographs. These are mainly areas where the Tjukurpa stories can only be known by one or other gender and the Aborigines would be offended if they were to come across them elsewhere. Incidentally, on a later visit to the State Library of Victoria, I noticed a sign at the beginning of an exhibition warning visitors that it contained images of Aboriginal people which some might find offensive. We were warned by our guides that it is considered very rude to take photographs of any of the Aborigines we came across without asking permission first.

The rock is the scene for many tales, involving giants, snake people, scorpions, emus and even a kingfisher. Our guides related many stories to us, pointing out the features that had been left on the rock as a consequence. In the absence of a tape recorder, I'm afraid I can't remember most of them but you can see the mark left by a scorpion here:

Or here, where Liru, the poisonous snake, has left tracks on the rock as she chased around it.

Water has always been an important factor for human activity around the rock. The Europeans drilled bore holes and tapped into the vast aquifer that is hidden beneath the desert of central Australia. For the Anangu people, water holes such as Mutitjula:

formed a central part of their culture.

There was still a trickle of water flowing into the pond from the days of rain that had fallen prior to our visit. Water flow off the rock tends to stop almost immediately after rain because there's no vegetation to catch and then release the water.

The one thing that everyone knows about Uluru is that it's red. We've all seen photographs of it glowing at sunset. Well, we were unlucky, so there won't be any such picture here, but what I can show you is the true colour of the rock:

It is, in fact, a greyish brown colour. That picture is a close up of the back of the “wave cave”

This is just one of the spectacular rock formations that are to be seen around the rock. Here are a few more:



So why is the rock red. Quite simply, it's rusting; the colour comes from the large amount of iron oxide in the rock itself. The lighter colour above is where new rock has been exposed and has not yet turned red.

This picture shows the track up the mountain for those wishing to climb it:

It doesn't look too steep there but, believe me, it is! And it's steeper than that elsewhere. The climb was closed while we were there because of the risk of more rain which makes it too dangerous. The Anangu people ask visitors not to climb the rock because the path crosses several sacred places. Despite this, around a third of tourists still do make the climb. I can understand why but, for me, simply being asked politely to respect the deeply held beliefs of other people was sufficient reason not to do it.

The tour ends at sunset which is when the rock really shows itself off. Unfortunately, although the rain held off, and there were occasional glimpses of the sun, by 18:08 (sunset) the cloud cover had reasserted itself. There was still one last opportunity for photographs though, and one of our party took this one of me:

You can just see the path of the climb about one third of the way along the rock from the right – it's the faint, lighter path running more or less straight up on this picture.

Despite the lack of sun, we still had the traditional Aussie barbecue at the sunset viewing area. As well as the barbecue, there was a huge selection of salads:

This was all washed down with Australian champagne (yes, I know!).

One other sight that day is worthy of note. Before the arrival of the railway, the standard means of shipping goods along the telegraph route was by camel train. The cameleers got the name Afghans, though most weren't, in fact, from Afghanistan. That didn't stop the name sticking, and eventually being lent to the train route that still bears the name “The Ghan”. Once the camel's task was made obsolete, most were turned out into the desert to fend for themselves. They're now something of a pest, with estimates of their numbers exceeding a million. As tourists, though, we were thrilled to get a decent photo-op of the only wild camels on the planet:

Now, if you're interested in the geological history of the rocks, then read on. Otherwise, thank-you for your time, and please leave quietly.

Both Kata Tjuta and Uluru were formed as part of an alluvial fan from the nearby Petermann Range of mountains – that is, from boulders and gravel washed off the mountains by rain. The alluvial fans provided the basic building blocks of the two structures – you can see in the pictures of Kata Tjuta that it is constructed of larger river boulders cemented into a conglomerate by mud and sand. Uluru is much finer sandstone. At several times in its history, the central part of Australia has been a large, shallow sea. There are still numerous salt lakes left over which can be seen when it's not recently been raining! Here's a picture I took from the aircraft window on the way home – you can see several of the salt crusts left over from the inland sea:

The sea deposited layer upon layer of silt over the alluvial fans, burying them and providing the cement that holds them together. Between 300 and 400 million years ago, an event called the Alice Springs Orogeny folded and fractured the rocks beneath the surface. The strata forming Kata Tjuta were tipped to about 15º to the horizontal – you can see that quite clearly in the banner picture. Uluru, though, was tipped to about 89º – the layers are now nearly vertical.

The division of Kata Tjuta is the result of millions of years of weathering opening up natural cracks in the structure. These have opened up to create the 36 domes. Uluru is weathering differently because of the much finer sandstone structure. The cycles of intense daily heat (ha!) and cold nights causes the outer layers to flake off – a process called onion skin weathering.

So, was it worth a round trip of almost 5.000 km? Oh yes, definitely. Was it deeply spiritual? Well, no, it wasn't for me. The pressures of time on a one-day tour made it hard to pause and soak up the atmosphere – it was more in the way of a whistle-stop, fact-finding tour. One day, I may go back and take a more leisurely approach, but even if I don't, I've seen one of world's great natural wonders. In the same way that the Opera House is an icon for Sydney, Uluru is an icon for Australia. It really would be a shame to visit Australia and not visit Uluru. 5.000 km may be a long way to visit a rock, but it's a lot less than having to come all the way back to Australia to see it.