Tao 4: Red Centre

Red centre of Australia got its name from the red dirt that covered pretty much everything here.  If you are here long enough, it will cover all your clothes as well.  This is a dry desert environment where only the hardiest plants and animals survive.  Luckily for us, many of the biting insects like mosquitoes are not so hardy.  The only annoyance here are the flies that follows you around all the time.  They don’t seem to bite though.

When people think of Australia, a few things usually came to mind – Sydney Opera House, Kangaroos, Koalas, and this rock.

This is Uluru, also called the Ayers Rock.  It’s the largest know monolith in the world. The rock is 348m tall.  From far away it doesn’t look all that much, but when you get closer, you start to realize its immense size. It’s believed that Uluru is just the tip of an iceberg, and the sandstone layer that it’s part of extends to as much as 6km underground.

It’s spring in the southern hemisphere.  Even here we see spring blooms everywhere. Many of the flowers don’t look anything like what we are used to see.

Wind and rain carved many caves and holes on the rock.  The harder substance stayed while the surrounding materials were etched away.  This process formed many interesting patterns on the rock surface.

Certain situations can drive people crazy

Having just recently “conquered” the Overland Track, we were quite confident of ourselves. We started the 14km loop around Uluru in mid afternoon and when there are storm clouds on the horizon.

Desert vegetation around Uluru

Dead wood and spring bloom

One of the few water sources around the base of the rock

It rained from time to time, sometimes heavily.  Equipped only with our sun hats, our clothes got wet whenever it rains, luckily the weather is warm, when the rain’s gone, our clothes dried up fairly quickly. The sun sets early around here. By the time we are done, it’s already dark.

It’s good that we have the tent set up as soon as arriving at the camp. It’s the first time we use this tent.  We want to test to see how it performs in the field.  Boy was it tested thoroughly.

The occasional rain in the afternoon turned into a full scaled thunder storm around midnight. The wind gusts pressed the tent to our bodies, at times we had to use our hands to support the tent from inside for fear that it would be blown away.  There was so much rain and we were worried that our tent site would get flooded.  Turned out we chose the site well (really we were lucky) and the pool of water came to a couple of feet from the tent.  Wind and rain subsided after 1AM and we were finally able to get some good sleep. In the morning people emerged from their tents and congratulated each other for surviving the storm.

Our humble adobe

On day two we drove to Kata Tjuta, which means “many heads” in native language. We have a Toyota Rav4 that’s fairly new.  One thing I noticed in Australia is that the cars on the road are noticeably older on average than in US. People seem to keep their cars for longer periods of time.  If you rent from some local companies, you could get cars made in the 90s. We went with Hertz this time.

Our noble steed

This noisy fella squawks loudly for no apparent reason

A pigeon with a twist

Rock formation in Kata Tjuta

Tracy taking in the sights in Valley of the Winds

Bottled water advertisement with questionable production value

A shiny beetle

Tracy resting at the end of Walpa Gorge walk

In Kata Tjuta, the rocks are very different from Uluru’s. They look like a mixture of concrete and rocks, but instead of concrete, the smaller rocks are cemented together by sandstone.

Local flora, native people used to suckle these for honey

Red sand dune

We were planning to drive to Kings Canyon around 350km away on the 3rd day. We have to drop the plan because all the rental car companies here set a 100km/day limit.  It’s not economical to do so, and we spent the day circling the rock twice to take pictures.  It turned sunny in the afternoon and I was finally able to get some good pictures.

Tracy does the Sun Dance

Stretch of highway at the base of Uluru

Uluru at around 4pm

Uluru at sunset

On the fourth day, our flight to Cairns does not leave till 3pm, and we have been to every corner of the park. we split our time wondering around in the small shopping plaza and sorting photos at the airport. The flight that will take us to Cairns was right on time.