After driving for four days through the Outback, there had to be a big payoff... and there was. We got to spend a number of days exploring the Red Centre, home to Uluru, Kata Tjuta, and Kings Canyon. Although Elaine and I had been here before, it was still breathtaking to experience each of these places again.
When we first saw Uluru rising up in the distance, it felt like we had reached the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. After all the flat terrain we had driven through, to finally reach this humongous monolith felt like arriving at Mecca. (How many more metaphors can I use?) Uluru is quite an amazing sight even though it is just a rock. It's hard to explain why it holds such a grip on people's imaginations but it has a certain magnetism about it.
Uluru is about 350 metres high and has a circumference of almost ten kilometres. The Ananju people have been living around it for over ten thousand years. White people arrived in the 1870s and almost immediately started pushing them out of the area. In 1985 the Australian government tried to right things by handing back the ownership of Uluru which has gone some way towards helping the local Ananju return to the area. The one problem the Ananju have with tourism is that many people still want to climb Uluru even though the Ananju have asked for this to be stopped since Uluru is a sacred place. The government reneged on its original agreement to stop this in 1985 but has since stated that it will eliminate this practice some time in the future. Fewer people are climbing Uluru each year but there are still a significant number who see this as their right. It is sad to hear the story of the slow extinction of many of the animals species in the area due to introduced non-native animals like cats, foxes, camels, etc. Even the grasses that arrived with the European settlers have crowded out native plants. One thing that the government has finally learned is to use the practice of controlled burning that the Aborigines use to manage the land. These days Aborigine elders sit down with the conservation officers and they plan together how to best take care of this fragile environment. What white people are realizing is that over ten thousand years of accumulated wisdom can't be ignored.
It was wonderful to catch the sunrise and sunset at Uluru (it seems to change colours throughout the day) but it was far more interesting to wander around the base of it and see it up close. We heard many stories about the various caves, aboriginal art, and fallen rocks. By the time we left, we felt we had become much better educated about this incredible place and its complex history.
Kata Tjuta is like the often forgotten younger brother to Uluru. It is just as impressive (it is taller and there are 36 rocks in all) but many people don't take the time to travel half an hour to the west of Uluru to explore it. We did the Valley of the Winds walk that winds through the gigantic rocks and discovered little waterholes with tadpoles, groves of trees with exotic birds, and many other sights that you wouldn't expect to find in the middle of a desert. Kata Tjuta (it means 'many heads' in the local Ananju language) is made up of the same kind of rock as Uluru so it shares its different shades of red. We found the walk around Kata Tjuta to be every bit as beautiful and fascinating as our walk around Uluru.
Kings Canyon is one of many gorges, chasms, gaps, or canyons in the Red Centre but since it is the one closest (only four hours away) to Alice Springs and possibly the most spectacular, it has become a very popular tourist attraction. Just like at Uluru and Kata Tjuta, we did our hiking in the morning when the sun wasn't able to do the most damage. (We got a chuckle out of how many times during our five 35 to 40 degree days in the Red Centre we heard local people say we were fortunate to have missed their hot summer.) Instead of exploring around the bottom like our other hikes, we climbed to the rim of the canyon and then walked all the way around it. At the head of the canyon we found the Garden of Eden, a waterhole with numerous animals and plants living in or around it that can't be found anywhere else in the desert. There are many domes along the rim which have been named 'the Lost City' because they look like abandoned rock huts. Again we were in awe of what incredible shapes time and water and weather could create.
So if you are ever in Australia and find yourself getting tired of the green rainforests, the blue ocean, and the yellow beaches of the coast, go for a nice long drive into the Red Centre. You won't regret it!
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