Outback: Alice Springs to Uluru Sept. 29

On Monday, Sept. 28, Jon dropped us off at the airport for our flight out to Alice Springs, in the outback. Alice Spring has the mighty Todd River running through it. They have boat races in the Todd every year assuming there is no water in it (the boats don’t have bottoms in them). The race teams stand in the middle of the bottomless boats and have a foot race. One year they had to cancel the boat race because the mighty Todd had water in it.

There was a mix up in our hotel reservations, but we eventually got it sorted out and stayed in a really nice hotel on the other side of the Todd. We went down town Alice Springs for a walk and to have dinner.

Tuesday morning at 6:00 we met the tour bus outside the hotel. There were two guides and two passengers. We were told that we would be picking up another person in Yalara about 450 Km out into the outback. We were beginning to see what the Outback looks like.


The mighty Todd River


Along the way we stopped every couple of hours for a break. At one stop Karen went on her first camel ride. It turns out that camels are pretty common in the outback. Years ago a wide variety of explorers, and military units imorted camels as pack animals. Once roads and rail lines came into to being many of the camels were just turned loose. Today there are about 6 million wild camels wandering around out there. Like any "introduced" plants or animals there will be environmental issues. Australia has way more rabbits and camels then they want or need and there are all kinds of things that have been tried to control them. None have worked.

More of what the the Outback looks like

Our first view of Uluru. We are still several miles away from camp.

The outback has a subtle, but ever changing landscape. If there is a low area or a dry stream bed or aquifer just unter the surface there will be some trees otherwise it gets pretty sparce

We stopped along the way, went out into the bush a bit and gathered fire wood for the night. We picked up the extra passenger in the town of Yalara.

This is a typical residential unit in Yalara (not where we stayed). From a distance the buildings just blend into the landscape. This town was constructed back in the 80's to replace the developments/hotels and such that had been built and subsequently torn down near Uluru (the big red rock). From a distance the town is nearly invisible.

This is our camp site. We dropped off our stuff and had a quick lunch, and headed out to Uluru (the big red rock).

We spent the rest of the day hiking at Uluru and ended up at a site some distance away to view the sunset. Back at camp we had steaks on the grill with all the fixings.

The rock is about 9 Km around the base. We walked along the west side of the rock with the guides who showed us some of the interesting features and some rock paintings left by the aborginal tribe.

The painting above is of a leaf and the one below is to depict kangaroo tracks

In the notch of the rock you can see the rising moon. Just one of the many intersting ways to demonstrate the scale of this monolith.

We hiked about 6 Km around on the east side of the rock which was the shady side by that time of the day. It was amazing to see how dramatically the rock interfaced with the flat terrain of the landscape

It is difficult for vetation to get started and to survive in this environment.

There were a few locations where there was either water that streamed down the face of the rock or in this case there was a small aquifer. The white trees below were gum trees that only survive in places where there is a consistent source of water.

After our 6 Km hike we headed out to the bus to be transported to a site about five to six miles away to a vantage point to be able to see the sun set refelct off of the rock. It was a very pleasant place to spend the end of the day.