Part 6 - Ayers Rock
March 23 - 24, 2005
Wednesday, March 23rd: Perth to Ayers Rock
We had a 10:35 flight from Perth to Ayers Rock, so we got to the airport a bit before that, got our car returned and our bags checked, ate breakfast, and looked around the shops for a while. Our flight was a bit late departing because of some logistics issues, and when we finally did depart, our flight had to make an extra stop in the town of Kalgoorlie to drop off some tires that the maintenance people there needed for another plane. It was a quick process - we just landed, taxied a bit, then some ground crew people unloaded the tires from our plane and we took off again. We flew for a couple of hours over the Outback (it really does appear to be a whole lot of nothing, but there are a lot of dried up lakes and things like that), then landed in Ayers Rock.
I picked up the rental car (a big 4WD diesel Nissan SUV, since we weren't entirely sure what sorts of roads we'd encounter, and it wasn't that much more expensive than a regular car) before my ears had totally cleared from the flight, and there was a bit of confusion between me and the rental agent. I'm still not entirely sure what she was trying to tell me, but she kept going on about if we returned it so and so and we'd save $125 and so forth, but I just couldn't manage to sort it all out. I knew that we were picking it up on Wednesday in Ayers Rock and returning it on Saturday in Alice Springs, so I wasn't too worried about what she was talking about, but it was kind of nagging in the back of my mind.
The small airport and the Ayers Rock Resort appear to be the only outposts of civilization for some distance, aside from a settlement called Mutitjulu that we never actually saw - I think it's just an Aboriginal settlement where the support staff for Ayers Rock lives. It's a very short drive from the airport to the resort. The resort consists of several resorts and hotels and a campground, plus various shared facilities like shops and restaurants, arrayed on a single campus around a loop road. The hotels were a bit pricier than we would have liked, so we booked a cabin at the campground, and it was pleasant enough. It had a usable kitchen/dining area, with a small bedroom on each side. The showers and toilets were a short stroll down the road, really not much worse than living in a dorm. There were a few people camping in designated grassy areas around the cabins, as well.
We got checked in and verified our reservations for the Sounds of Silence dinner that evening (more on that in a second), got settled into the cabin, changed into nicer clothes for the dinner, and strolled around the grounds of the resort a bit. We ascended to a lookout point atop a small hill, and took pictures of Ayers Rock and the Olgas (also known as Uluru and Kata Tjuta, respectively, but I'll go with the English names for ease of typing). As the crow flies, the resort was about 12 km north of Ayers Rock, and about 20 km west of the Olgas. As you can kind of see in the photos, the desert was mostly fine red-orange, sandy soil and rocks, with a lot of scattered brush, some bushes, and a few small trees. There were quite a few flies around, but I guess they settle down around dusk, because, as we would find out, they were a lot worse during the day.
We boarded a tour bus for the Sounds of Silence dinner. We were the only people from the campground signed up for the dinner, which was a little pricey (something like $120 Australian per person), but highly recommended by our tour books and by Julie's parents. As you would expect, larger groups got on the bus at the pricier hotels. The bus took us out a washboard dirt road near the resort to the area where the dinner takes place. First, we walked up to an area where we stood around, ate hors doeuvres, sipped champagne (I just held a glass, since I don't drink), and listened to a didgeridoo player. Some of the guests tried their hands at didgeridooing, and proved that it's apparently harder than it looks. I took another pair of pictures of Ayers Rock and the Olgas from this area, and then we proceeded to the seating area.
They had a area cleared of brush and lightly fenced in, with a number of round tables set up in front of a buffet-style serving area. We sat with a middle-aged couple from Australia, a grad-school aged couple from England, and a late-twenties/early thirties couple from Germany. The Australian couple kept us entertained with tales of pythons in their house and other facets of their lives, while the English couple and Julie and I talked about our travels in Australia. (The Australians were impressed with how much stuff we'd seen, as this was apparently a rare trip away from home for them, for an anniversary. Apparently the woman had surprised the man with the trip on short notice - kind of a "come on, we've got a plane to catch and I packed your bag" sort of thing. They'd left teenagers at home, so they called to check up on things a couple of times, as well.) The German couple's English wasn't that great (better than my nonexistent German, though), so they didn't talk very much, but were pleasant. I really hate making small talk with strangers, but despite that, it was still a nice evening's conversation.
They served us water and bread and all the wine you could drink (again, not much use to me), and the rest of the meal was self-service from the buffet line. There were salads, then a number of native meats (kangaroo, barramundi, and a couple of other things), some veggies, then a couple of choices of desserts. I'm a bit of a picky eater, but I had a good meal (the kangaroo was pretty tasty, not unlike beef, really).
After the meal, they usually have a star guide come out and give a talk and point out various things in the sky and whatnot. But with typical luck for me, it was completely overcast and threatening rain, so that was a wash. That was very disappointing - I love looking at stars, and a few years ago I saw an unbelievable starry sky in the middle of the desert in Yuma, AZ. I was really looking forward to seeing things from the Outback, but it didn't work out. The guide pointed to where a few things would have been, had we been able to see them (which just made it worse that we couldn't see them), but the presentation was a bit too poetic for my tastes - I was hoping for a more scientific, astronomy-type thing. They tried a couple of times to recite a poem about the silence of the desert, followed by a moment of silent contemplation, and twice the silence was interrupted by the sound of the tour bus (which was waiting nearby to take us back to the resort) cranking up. That was pretty funny. It finally started sprinkling rain and they cut things short and took us back to the resort. All things considered, we didn't really get our money's worth from the Sounds of Silence, but I suppose it's still a cool thing to do in principle.
We went to bed shortly after we got back, since we were rising early to see the sunrise at Ayers Rock. I got up a couple of times during the night to go to the bathroom, and wouldn't you know that the clouds had cleared and the stars were out (but somewhat obscured by the lights of the resort). I also saw a couple of cute rabbits hopping around eating grass outside the bathrooms, one of a very few actual, live wildlife sightings on the trip.
Thursday, March 24th: Ayers Rock and the Olgas
We got up super early to see the sunrise at Ayers Rock. We basically took quick showers, got dressed, jumped in the car and drove to Ayers Rock, stopping at the gate to pay the $50 Australian admission fee (they're apparently really proud of the rock). We arrived at the designated sunrise viewing area just a little bit after first light, and the area was already quite crowded with people. It would have been nice to sit back comfortably and listen to the silence and watch the sunrise, but instead we stood and listened to tour groups jabber and take photos even though the area is supposedly sacred and you're not supposed to take pictures. The sunrise wasn't particularly dramatic, and I tried to abide by the rules and not take any photos, but I finally got fed up watching every other person out there take pictures left and right, and took a shot of Ayers Rock with the Olgas in the background.
We then drove around the rock, stopping a couple of times at various parking areas to see different parts of the rock. It's hard to really get a sense of how big it was, because there's really not much around it to give you a sense of scale. If I had to guess, I'd say it's roughly the same size as Stone Mountain here in Georgia, but I don't really have any facts to back that up. We stopped by the interpretive center for a while, but by this point, harsh though it may be, I was getting a little tired of reading the Aboriginal legends. I'm curious about the geological history of the area, but not so much about the legend of the giant emu that fought with the giant echidna over the hands of the three giant maidens, which is how those four giant rocks came to be, or whatever, and that stuff kind of wore on me.
There are a few walking trails at Ayers Rock, one up into a cleft in the rock, one all the way around the rock, and one up to the top of the rock. While those might be cool, we also wanted to see the Olgas, which has a hiking trail that was highly recommended by our tour book, so we skipped the Ayers Rock trails and drove out to the Olgas. We stopped briefly at a scenic overlook that offered a nice view of the Olgas. Shortly thereafter, a herd of camels crossed the road in front of us, forcing us to stop. Julie took this picture of one of the camels - I thought this was probably the best picture she took on the whole trip.)That was pretty cool - apparently the early settlers brought in camels, and enough escaped or were abandoned that there's now a pretty substantial wild camel population in the Outback.
By the time we made it to the parking lot for the Valley of the Winds trail at the Olgas, it was about 11 AM. We ran into the same English couple from the night before, decked out in their fly nets, finishing the hike. The sun was getting to be pretty hot, but we were more or less prepared for it and figured we could make the 4 mile hike without too much trouble. Ayers Rock is basically one big hunk of sandstone, basically uniform in composition, and all you can really do is walk around it (or up it). The Olgas, on the other hand, are a jumble of about 36 huge rock domes, each made up of conglomerate, a jumble of small rocks of various materials glued together by sediment. The tallest dome rises almost 1800 feet above the surrounding plain, 646 feet higher than Ayers Rock. The Valley of the Winds trail is a loop that winds among some of the larger domes. There were signs saying you should carry plenty of water, so I loaded up enough water for Julie and I into my backpack. This turned out to be an unnecessary burden, as there were a couple of water stations (big tanks of drinkable collected rainwater) along the trail.
The first half of the hike was gorgeous, and mostly shady. The trail was rough, covered in a bunch of small rocks that had eroded out of the larger body, but it was generally easy to follow because there was only one way you could go. There were a couple of places where the trail turned steeply upward on solid rock and had to be marked, but generally you were on your own to stay on the trail. Here's a photo of one of the larger domes at the beginning of the trail, with Julie at the base to provide a sense of scale. Most of the photos don't really do justice to the size of the rocks we were walking among. Past the second lookout point that was about halfway through the trail, the scenery got a little less interesting as the trail came out from between the big rocks and flattened out. We also lost our shade, and it started to get real hot. Plus, the flies were in full effect, literally covering our clothes as we walked. Having them land on your clothes was preferable to having them buzz your face, though. We thought the $7 fly nets were overpriced, but once we got onto the trail, we realized that they were totally worth it. They'd be worth it at 3 times the price. The flies were relentless in swarming around your face, so it was a constant battle fanning them away. Whenever I stopped to put my pack down for a minute, a huge swarm of flies scattered from my back and my backpack. It was truly miserable.
The highlight of the second half of the walk was a large goanna that was sunning himself on a rock beside the trail. This particular lizard was probably 4 feet long (maybe more to the top of his tail). They are apparently not aggressive or dangerous, but I still kept a fairly respectful distance while I took my pictures. Also cool were the flocks of tiny zebra finches that gathered in the bushes around the water stations. There were hundreds of birds, and they made quite a lot of noise in the form of oddly low pitched (for a bird) chirping.
The lowlight of the second half of the walk was the oppressive heat (in the 90s) and the weight of my pack full of water. Julie, normally the slowest human on the face of the earth, was so maddened by swarms of flies that she was nearly jogging away from me, while I stumbled and staggered in the heat. It wasn't the best time I've ever had, but the beauty of the first half of the hike made it worthwhile (once we made it back to the car and cranked up the A/C).
We drove back to Ayers Rock to scope out our evening destination, the designated sunset viewing area, and take some pictures of the rock at midday. Then we headed back to the resort and had lunch. (The food was good, but the service was super slow, and they steadfastly refused to bring our check, so we finally opted to charge the food to our room.) We then retired to the cabin to nap and wait out the midday heat. Later on there was a note left on our cabin door telling us that people in the cabins couldn't charge stuff to their rooms, so we had to go back to the restaurant, try to get somebody's attention and explain the situation so we could pay our bill, which was pretty annoying. They thanked us for coming back, which was weird - what were we going to do, not pay for the food? We shopped for a few souvenirs for our families in the shops at the resort (kangaroo leather hats for our dads, a hand painted Aboriginal-style vase for my mom, some t-shirts and other stuff for Julie's other relatives), then headed back out to Ayers Rock for the sunset.
We battled other tourists who seemed to think that our spot was the absolute best spot to take a photo, and we battled the omnipresent flies, and saw a really pretty sunset and moonrise. The rock does seem to go through quite a few color changes as the sun sets. At the sunset viewing area, the rock is in front of you and the sun sets behind you. The sunset was gorgeous, but too late we realized that if we went around to the sunrise viewing area on the opposite side of the rock, we could get some photos of the rock with the gorgeous sunset behind it. By the time we drove all the way around, though, it was pretty much completely dark. We came back around to the sunrise viewing area and tried to do a bit of stargazing, but the full moon and the remnants of the sunset were just too bright, so we drove back to the campground. We walked over to a different restaurant at one of the hotels and got hamburgers for dinner, and brought them back to the cabin to eat, then crashed after a very long, hot, tiring day.
