Celebrity Rock

There are many ways to see a tourist attraction, but our favourite way is to explore it on foot. We arrived early at Uluru this morning to witness the famous changing of colours on the Rock as the sun rises. Considering this is the low season there were still hundreds of people there – most of whom arrived on oversized tourist buses. Fortunately when the impressive sunrise show finished most of the crowd hopped back on their bus, carrying their pre packed breakfast boxes to be delivered to the next attraction.

We however took the opportunity to do the walk around the Rock known as The Base Walk. Even at 0630 in the morning the 10.5km walk was a challenge because of the flies, bright sunshine and the rapidly increasing heat.

Up close, what can be said about Uluru?

Firstly, it is huge. It’s much taller than it appears to be in photographs. We often do the Bay Walk in Sydney and that is a touch over 7km. The fact that the track around the Rock is over 10kms gives an indication of its area.

Secondly, as we walk we wondered why it is, that we humans are so impressed by this geological formation. There is a bigger rock formation on the road in called Mt Conner. There are taller rocks known as The Olgas or Kata Tjuta 50km away, which we will visit tomorrow. Rightly or wrongly Uluru is an international geological celebrity and as we take the time to circumnavigate it we begin to understand its mysterious attraction.

Finally, as we walked today we marveled that local Aborigines were living as tribal hunters and gatherers in this incredibly harsh terrain just 80 years ago. We felt tired walking in the heat for a couple of hours in the early morning, before retreating to our air-conditioned hotel. We can only marvel at a culture that lived in this land for countless generations. What a shock it must have been for them, when some white blokes arrived convinced this was a good place to initially hunt for dingos, to then run cattle and finally a few decades later to fly hundreds of thousands of people in from all over the world.