Day 40 - Ayers Rock and The Olgas

Once again we were up at the crack of dawn; well before it actually at about 04:00 again. This was so we could have breakfast and then go and watch the sunrise at Ayers Rock. It’s a funny place there, almost like a production line with all the tour companies doing the same thing; a long snake of buses and coaches light the way to the viewing point where everyone sets up their cameras and shuffles for the best views. The sunrise gave better views than the sunset and Danny thought it’d be pretty impressive if someone came here every day for a year and captured all of the sunrises and sunsets then put them all together as every one of them is different… Needless to say, Corrie liked the sound of this idea.

After sunrise we got dropped off to do half of the base walk; only the half in the shade as the temperature was set to rocket again today. This was a nice walk; there were lots of flies but Danny was prepared and donned his rather fetching face net, whilst Corrie got some payback on Mother Nature with some fly-swatting! It’s such an impressive place, Ayers rock, and it’s a place that makes you feel quite small in the world; especially when the huge rock is just like an iceberg in that the most part of it is underground – it’s easy to see why it’s such a big tourist attraction.

Our next stop was Kata Tjuta/ The Olgas where we went for a walk at this huge rock formation, and again only did the short walk due to the rising sun. These two places are pretty much the only blips on the horizon for miles and miles in this area and the explanation of how scientists believe they were formed was pretty impressive… but very long so we won’t be writing it here!

The next stop was at a place we’d passed on the way to our Uluru camp; a very large rock, not dissimilar to Ayers Rock, called Mt Conner. Due to it being on the way to the Big Red Rock, many tourists will stop and take pictures of this, mistaking it for Ayers Rock and leave happy with their “fake” snaps. This very thing has earned Mt Conner the nickname “Fooluru” with its cheeky deceptiveness!

We continued on until we got to Erldunda; a place very close to the actual centre of Australia (and the closest we’d get to the centre on our trip.) Danny took the chance to get a couple of shots of potential Big Things (Big Echidna and Big Lizardy Thing) though we’re not sure if they are yet. This stop is where we and four others were to join a new tour group to continue our journey south towards Adelaide. For some bizarre reason our new driver was made to swap her bus with another one and she really didn’t look impressed. It turned out that this one didn’t have air-con – a true nightmare as the bus was almost full; with 19 people including the driver, and the temperature was 46 degrees!!! There was nothing she could get done to fix this and she was told to take us the four hours to Mala where we’d be stopping the night and then we’d get a replacement bus for the rest of the trip. The guide was fuming and vented her frustrations to us all and apologised profusely for this terrible happening! The journey really was pretty dreadful but we did pull over to watch another wonderful sunset which was a silver lining.

We got to the campsite late on and got tea sorted quickly so we could all have showers and go to bed.

This tour group is all women apart from Danny and another fellow who’s with his wife (they’re from Switzerland.) Danny seems content enough with this, but it’ll be a hassle for the ladies at service stops etc as they all have to queue for the toilets!