Our Rock Tour
Eventually our days of waiting were over and at 6am on the 14th June we were picked up by our tour group in a nice warm bus to go discover what there's actually to see here in the center of OZ! We spent 4 hours on our nice warm bus getting to the first notable sight which was Kings Canyon...a smaller version of the Grand Canyon, but it provided good views of the surrounding emptiness and thanks to the fact we were on a "Guided" tour we learnt all about pretty much nothing as our guide was in fact the pen pushing owner who never normally leaves the office - turns out he has no idea what his guides normally do!!! (he was showing the new boy the ropes - obviously they were desperately short of staff!). He did well on his first trip, managing to lose the Japanese part of our group...it tickled us to see him get so stressed sending the new boy running off around the canyon searching for them!! This in turn made us 1.5 hrs late getting to our first camp spot, not arriving till way after sunset into the middle of nowhere - everyone starving and freezing cold! Once a huge campfire was roaring and everyone had had a few beers and a mouthful of sand - spirits were once again soaring, after a good feed and more drinks we even managed to get a brief singsong going before it was time to hit the 'Swag'. The Swag: a canvas bag with in built mattress which you wriggle into in your sleeping bag, with your head popping out the top making for perfect star gazing, but also a very cold head!!!
Tree Woman
Check out the cool colours -millions of years worth of layered rock!
Up at the crack of sparrows for an uninspiring cold breakfast, only the still blazing fire gave any incentive to break the seal of frost and get out of your swag! Fed, watered and freezing cold we boarded our nice warm bus heading to Uluru National Park. Our first excitement for the day was witnessing a Roo being KO'd on the road - on closer inspection of the mangled body we discovered a small Joey had been thrown from it's pouch, not one's to shirt away from our responsibilty we stored it in the Esky for later...mmm BBQ!
Only kidding not that heartless, the Joey was still alive so we wrapped it in a blanket and took it to a nearby rescue centre! And then feasted on the mother!
Our first stop today was not the Rock but to visit the less well known Olgas - another random out of place rock formation which was pretty cool and made for a pleasant walk through the massive boulders! The icy cold breeze was most unwelcome though! After lunch we caught our first glimpse of the legend that is Uluru (aka Ayres Rock) and the Japs went into a camera frenzy!!! We didn't really eat the mother - it would have tasted of bumper. On arrival at the Rock we were given another badly worded crap story by our guide about a couple of the sacred sights, and after a quick stroll it was off to the sunset carpark to join the hundreds of other tour operators as we prepared to watch the spectacle that is the amazing colour changing Rock at Sunset!.....After many photos later we packed up and drove away in our coach to a proper campground nearby and once again the campfire was the saviour of yet another cold night. The campfire doubled up as a 'breadmaker' with our guides making the original bush tucker bread 'Damper' - a basic dough of flour, beer, water and salt cooked in a big cast iron pot which is buried into the fire; with the extra addition of herbs and cheese this turned out to be a surprisingly tasty snack! Hovis eat your heart out!
Would you beleive it another shit sleep due to the cold and that was with both of us squeezing into the same swag to conserve body heat (similar to us both sleeping in just one sleeping bag!). Drove back round to Uluru, this time for sunrise but with a harsh wind having developed overnight it was anything but comfortable to stand and watch! We retreated into the warmth of the bus to munch on our weetabix and watch the sun slowly come into view - this definitely played 2nd fiddle to sunset. Once the sun had started to warm up the day we ventured outside the bus and tackled the 7km base walk, getting up close and personal with Uluru - however our plans of conquering The Rock were scuppered by the strong winds forcing them to close the climb up it! For all its a sacred Rock in the eyes of the Abos we had resigned ourselves to completeing the challenge and were slightly disappointed not to have the opportunity, and as the saying goes ' There are two types of men, those who like to look at a mountain and those who like to climb it!' - we are definitly the latter!
On completion of our base walk we were greeted by the welcome sight of tea and biscuits - at last the guides had learnt how too keep the English happy! That was pretty much the end of our tour as we were then dropped off at Uluru International AirShed - waiting about for our flight to Perth, all in all a pretty good tour! But the highlight was still to come....little did we realise that from our window seat we would get the best view ever of the Rock, seeing it from a birdseye view really put it into perspective with the surrounding dry endless red dessert - only problem, no camera with us!
Only kidding not that heartless, the Joey was still alive so we wrapped it in a blanket and took it to a nearby rescue centre! And then feasted on the mother!
Our first stop today was not the Rock but to visit the less well known Olgas - another random out of place rock formation which was pretty cool and made for a pleasant walk through the massive boulders! The icy cold breeze was most unwelcome though! After lunch we caught our first glimpse of the legend that is Uluru (aka Ayres Rock) and the Japs went into a camera frenzy!!! We didn't really eat the mother - it would have tasted of bumper. On arrival at the Rock we were given another badly worded crap story by our guide about a couple of the sacred sights, and after a quick stroll it was off to the sunset carpark to join the hundreds of other tour operators as we prepared to watch the spectacle that is the amazing colour changing Rock at Sunset!.....After many photos later we packed up and drove away in our coach to a proper campground nearby and once again the campfire was the saviour of yet another cold night. The campfire doubled up as a 'breadmaker' with our guides making the original bush tucker bread 'Damper' - a basic dough of flour, beer, water and salt cooked in a big cast iron pot which is buried into the fire; with the extra addition of herbs and cheese this turned out to be a surprisingly tasty snack! Hovis eat your heart out!
Would you beleive it another shit sleep due to the cold and that was with both of us squeezing into the same swag to conserve body heat (similar to us both sleeping in just one sleeping bag!). Drove back round to Uluru, this time for sunrise but with a harsh wind having developed overnight it was anything but comfortable to stand and watch! We retreated into the warmth of the bus to munch on our weetabix and watch the sun slowly come into view - this definitely played 2nd fiddle to sunset. Once the sun had started to warm up the day we ventured outside the bus and tackled the 7km base walk, getting up close and personal with Uluru - however our plans of conquering The Rock were scuppered by the strong winds forcing them to close the climb up it! For all its a sacred Rock in the eyes of the Abos we had resigned ourselves to completeing the challenge and were slightly disappointed not to have the opportunity, and as the saying goes ' There are two types of men, those who like to look at a mountain and those who like to climb it!' - we are definitly the latter!
On completion of our base walk we were greeted by the welcome sight of tea and biscuits - at last the guides had learnt how too keep the English happy! That was pretty much the end of our tour as we were then dropped off at Uluru International AirShed - waiting about for our flight to Perth, all in all a pretty good tour! But the highlight was still to come....little did we realise that from our window seat we would get the best view ever of the Rock, seeing it from a birdseye view really put it into perspective with the surrounding dry endless red dessert - only problem, no camera with us!
posted by Georgie and Chris at 8:03 pm
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