The side trip to Uluru and Kata Tjuta

This was not a well organised side trip to see Uluru and Kata Tjuta.   In fact no research was done beforehand, rather it was a case of pop in and see these sites while we are up that way.  Only a 535.4 km return trip from the Stuart Highway.    Not a great distance when one considers the vast distances in the Australian outback.

 We had tried to book a caravan site there a week beforehand, with no success, either because we could not find the telephone number, or no one answered the phone and once we were directed to Wilpena Pound in the Flinders Ranges.   The same indigenous group runs both camping sites. This should have raised alarm bells!   We have spoken to other travellers since who have had the same experience.   

Off we went regardless, knowing that there was an overflow section at the back of the caravan site.   There is only one camping park, and no camping areas after Curtin Springs 85 km away from the resort (Yulara).

The Lasseter Highway was quite a new experience.  First up Mount Ebenezer Roadhouse, closed since 2019 due to being poorly run by the local community.    There was quite a bit of controversy when someone tried to lease the roadhouse, and failed to do so.   Now it looks derelict.    Very sad really.

Further up the road (104.3 km) is Curtin Springs Station, which is a million acre cattle station.   But it also has an inn with 27 rooms, a camping ground, fuel, store and restaurant.    They make paper from the native grasses on the station, and provide guided walks.   I believe the non powered sites are free, and payment is only required for the use of the toilets and showers.   Water is available to fill caravan/motorhome tanks, with a donation to the Flying Doctor Service.   It is near the turn off to Kings Canyon, and has wonderful views of Mt Conner.    We should have stayed here!    Oh well.

Kings Canyon.   We did not even realise this was a spectacular place to visit, 122 km from Curtin Springs.

No more said on this one.   Although we had an extra day to spare, this would not have been enough time to explore the area.  

 Uluru, taken from the back of the caravan park at sunset.   I think we were about twenty kms away.   It still looked impressive.   The first photograph is the one that is uploaded onto Facebook so thought it needed to one of Uluru and not Mt Conner.

Mt Conner!   Due to having done no research, we thought this was Uluru!  And I know that we are not the only people to be fooled by this rock.   Although there is a road that leads south it does not go near this huge rock.   Mt Conner is actually on private property, Curtin Springs Station.   The only way to view it close up is by helicopter.   The views of Mt Conner as you drive back from Uluru are pretty spectacular. 

We stopped at the rest area to take photographs of Mt Conner.   On the opposite side of the road there was a path that went up a sandhill, which we did not take.   Apparently there are fantastic views of the salt lake on the other northern side.   

We finally arrived at the township of Yulara, most of which is the Ayers Rock Resort, an indigenous owned enterprise that provides accommodation, restaurants and other services for people visiting the park.   I believe there is an Aboriginal school in the town.

We did not visit the centre of the resort, sadly.   Apparently it is beautifully landscaped with a tourist shop, cafes and restaurants.

Yulara was established in the early 1980s after a decision was made to relocate the tourist accommodation away from Uluru.   By the early 1970s, the unstructured and unmonitored tourism was having a detrimental effect on both Uluru and Kata Tjuta.   There was a camping ground at the base of Uluru, plus at least one motel nearby.   There was also a runway for planes in the vicinity too.  And of course people climbed the rock, up until a few years ago. 

There were no signs that any of this existed as all structures were dismantled and the bush has claimed the land back.

I tried to find old maps online which showed the camping ground and motel.   The camping ground was clearly marked, but not the motel or runway.   

But I did find some alarming information.   Apparently, in 1983, a man drove a 25 tonne Mack truck into the crowded bar of the motel and killed five people.   It would appear that he had been barred from the bar, and retaliated by driving his truck into the bar.    He did not confess to this of course, claimed he had no memory of driving the truck into the bar, but he was imprisoned for the murder of five people.   

Then there was the dreadful killing of baby Azaria Chamberlain by a dingo in 1980, plus the wrongful arrest and imprisonment of her mother.    The awful trial by the media.   It makes one shudder to think of such a beautiful area being the scene of immense tragedies. 

Once I entered the national park I could see why there was a separation between the park and the resort, as the protection of the area was paramount, both for native bush and animals as well as for the natural beauty and special significance to the Anangu, who were the traditional owners of the park.  The Anangu owners include the Yankunytjatjara and Pitjantjatjara people.

Now back to the one and only caravan park, which wins an award for being the most disorganised caravan park ever.    The staff in the front office were very pleasant but the real organisation was done centrally somewhere, and they had a system which we did not understand.   It was very busy which probably did not help, with long queues every afternoon.   And people mostly only stayed a few days.   

If you were lucky enough to obtain a booking then your site was earmarked for you until you arrived, and the booking people would not move your name from that site.   They also refused to move people around on paper, consequently there were heaps of vacant sites.   We were the filler uppers, so were moved from site to site, and after the second night we gave up and left.   There is nothing more off putting than packing up and moving to another site a few metres away.

Our site for the first night was on a slope, which meant using our levellers and pieces of wood.   Packing up, moving two sites along was not easy.   Also it could not be done until the office had cleared where there would be a vacant site for us.    After ten in the morning.

The usual closeness of sites.   RVs everywhere.   Sites cost around $56 per night.

There were beautiful large grassed areas, for the few tents, but it was lovely to walk around this part of the caravan park.    Piper was happy with all the grass.

The overflow area at the back of the caravan park may have been preferable.   We were told it had a huge generator there which was very noisy, but people said  it was great being there, with plenty of room and not really noisy.    There was no power, or water hookup, but at $30 per night this was a good option.   But we did not take it up unfortunately.   Oh well!

The idea was that we would take turns visiting the national  park as dogs were not permitted in the park.   Walter decided that the view from the caravan park was enough for him, so he decided to have a quiet day reading.    He was by this stage not prepared to move the caravan again, and fed up with the disorganisation.

So off I went, for my day in the park, after I had helped Walter move the caravan.   

My morning view of Uluru in the morning.

The Cultural Centre was amazing, packed full of information about the Anangu culture.  It was an amazing visual presentation of the people, their beliefs and their life.   It also portrayed Tjukurpa, the traditional law guiding Anangu and the foundation of their culture.   It was fascinating.

The structure of the Cultural Centre is a free-form structure built from locally made mud bricks, and represents two ancestral snakes, Kuniya the woma python woman and Liru the venomous snake man.   They helped to create Uluru.

Photography within the Cultural Centre was not allowed.   

My first close view of Uluru.   To see the rock closeup was breathtaking to say the least.  And even better was the opportunity to touch it.

Initially I started to walk from the Cultural Centre but realised this was going to take too long.   There was a convenient sealed road that went around the rock, with roads into the important parts.  It would have been great to walk around the rock, about 10.6 kms, but time did not allow this.   Better still I would have liked to hire a bike and complete the full circle but no time for that either.

In fact there were sedgeway tours too, but definitely not for me!    I am sure I would fall off one of these.

I did take a walk into Kantju Gorge where there were rock paintings.  The photo below was not the gorge!

There were plenty of signs explaining the Anangu stories.  The rock was ever changing.

And the amazing sight of lush vegetation on the way into the waterhole.   A different world.

Mutitjulu Waterhole, home of the Wanampi, an ancestral watersnake.   A very special place.   The water cascades from the top of the rock when it rains.

This piece of rock looks like it is about to fall off!

The ever changing face of Uluru.

It is still possible to see the outline of the walk up the rock.   Not for me.

The next part of the tour took me to Kata Tjuta, also known as the Olgas.   Kata Tjuta means 'many heads' in Pitjantjatjara.  It is 50 kms from Uluru. This is an Anangu men's site and is sacred under traditional law.

The photograph below was taken from the dune viewing platform.   

The start of the Valley of the Winds walk, apparently quite a difficult walk at times, and not to be completed on a hot day.

The Walpa Gorge walk, which takes about an hour.  No time for this walk either.

A view of Kata Tjuta from the viewing area where the toilets are situated.   Very smelly long drop toilets!

The desert oak (allocasuarina decaisneana) caught our attention as we drove towards Uluru.   These trees really stand out in the desert.   The young trees have a narrow trunk and the grey/green foliage grows on the trunk. It is only when the trees reach maturity do they have spreading limbs and bushy foliage.   A pity I did not take any photographs of them.   They were most unusual.

We visited the industrial part of the resort of Yulara, so it was good to see the practical part!   

Walter emptying the portaloo at the dump point.  

The closed and derelict roadhouse at Mt Ebenezer.  

We stayed at the Erldunda Roadhouse at the corner of the Stuart and Lasseter Highways.   The roadhouse with the claim of being in the centre of Australia.

It was a very comfortable caravan park, very busy, good ablution block, and a bit of wildlife thrown in.

Walter and Piper standing apprehensively in front of the camels.

They even had a viewing platform in order to watch the sunset.

And from there we continued on our way south, to Coober Pedy, Woomera and Quorn. 

An early morning view of the sunrise at Coober Pedy.

Although we did see as much as we should have, it was still a worthwhile trip into Uluru.

 

Alice Springs - A delightful town

Alice Springs is a most delightful town, away out in the centre of the desert.   I was not sure what we expected, but certainly it proved to be a great surprise.

And why?   For a start the area around the town has ranges, with amazing rock formations, with plenty of bush around, plus history.   So much to see and do, and we only scratched the surface!

Alice Springs was first called Stuart after John Stuart, the explorer.   Then the name was changed to Alice Springs, named after the wife of the former Postmaster General of Adelaide, Sir Charles Todd.  The Spring part of the name was due to the waterhole on the Todd River.  

I read Neville Shute's 'A Town Like Alice', which I picked up from the free books in a campsite laundry.    I had not read this book for scores of years, but enjoyed it all the same.   I finally understood that part of the book was about a small place in northern Queensland, who the heroine in the book wanted to change into a town that mirrored Alice Springs.   

The other book was called 'Flynn of the Inland' written by Ion Idriess, a biography of John Flynn, who brought the Flying Doctor Service and the Bush Hospitals to outback Australia.  As part of the Australian Inland Mission he travelled the outback, visiting all the remote settlements.   He covered thousands of kilometres on camel back, certainly no small feat, as well as gaining support and finance from corporations and donations to build the hospitals and start the flying doctor service.   Amazing reading.

It was an easy drive north from Marla, about 454 km, through land that was increasingly covered in scrub, as against desert south of Marla.   This was a surprise to us as we were expecting desert and more desert.   Once we reached the Northern Territory the speed limit changed to 130 kmh which floored us, as the road was no better than in South Australia.   How can they justify people doing that speed, this was not a French or German motorway.    

As we were towing a lightweight pop top caravan I mostly sat on 90 to 100 kmh, which I think is the required upper limit, the same as for trucks.   However, seeing the road trains (trucks with three and sometimes four trailers on the back) hurtling past at 90 kmh was quite daunting.   When I saw one coming towards me, I always slowed down to about 60kmh in order to stop the wave of wind hitting the car and caravan.

But onto Alice Springs.   We had booked into Alice Springs Tourist Park, which was opposite the Araluen Arts Centre.   Certainly an added bonus.

,It was a lovely tree covered park, although the sites were close together, which appeared to be the usual situation in South Australia and Northern Territory.   Most caravan parks are run by big companies (Big4, Discovery Parks, G'day Parks plus others we have not stayed in).   The Alice Springs Tourist Park was run by Family Parks.  They all pack the vans in, something we are not used to after the United Kingdom and Europe.   Each caravan has just enough room to put an awning out, and the car is parked at the front.  

But we were so fortunate, Walter managed to get a site on grass at the back of the park, with bushes on either side of us.   We were happy people.  

 The next morning  we hooked the van up again, temporarily I might add, as we wanted to get the brakes checked after the bouncy trip on corrugated roads.   As well as costing a few hundred dollars to change the bearings, and put a new tap in (was on the way out) we learned heaps about how to look after a caravan in Australia.   

The clicking noise as we reversed the caravan was normal, we were told. Mind you the clicking noise had become a little too loud for our liking.   Much better now, thank goodness.

Now bearings in the caravan wheels were not something we thought about really.   In the UK we only completed one long trip per year, and our caravan was serviced yearly too.     

Although we get our caravan serviced yearly here too, there is a difference.   Namely the distances we cover, and the fact that we often travel on gravel roads.   When one looks at the map of Australia, there are many gravel roads in the the western part (South Australia, Western Australia and Northern Territory).  

So checking the wheel bearings will become a routine job, when checking tyre conditions and pressure. Plus checking all is well under the van.   

On the morning we hitched up to go to the caravan repairers, Piper would not budge from the bed.  'I have had enough!' she said.

The  town centre of Alice Springs was very quiet due to a lack of overseas tourists.   And Australian travellers, like ourselves, are not going to buy souvenirs from the tourist shops, and especially sadly from the indigenous women selling their paintings.  We bought a beautiful painting last year in Coober Pedy, and like most Australians there is a limit on the number of paintings one can hang up in the house. 

I looked at the price of boots in the shops, and then bought a pair at a work wear shop not far from the campsite, for $30 less.

The council chambers, with a lovely park in the front.

The John Flynn Memorial Uniting Church, with an Indigenous woman selling a painting in front of it. 

Adelaide House Museum.   This was the first purpose built hospital to a design by the Reverend John Flynn and was completed in 1926.  Flynn designed the Adelaide House, with a cooling system, which was a cellar with ducts taking cool air up to the upper levels.

A small ward in the hospital.

Todd Mall, a beautifully landscaped street, but quite empty.  Although on Saturday it did liven up a bit.

We made a short visit to the small reptile park.   The crocodile in the photo below was feeling the cold, and did not move much.

The thorny lizard, also not moving much due to the cold weather.  Fascinating little creatures.

The Sturt Desert Pea, not such a great photo.  A beautiful flower!   This plant was at the entrance to the Alice Springs Desert Park.   No dogs allowed.   It looked a fantastic park too.

Two camel sculptures beside the new Ghan railway line. 

A view of part of the town, from the highest point, Anzac Hill lookout.   There was another hill, called Billy Goat Hill, once the grazing land of goats, kept I think to provide milk.  The water tanks which supplied water to Alice Springs during World War II, were located on the hill.

The Todd River!   No water of course.   There was water here when the area was chosen as the site for the telegraph station.   The water hole was thought to be from a spring.   Most of the time the Todd River is just a sandy riverway, lined with gum trees.

A rocky outcrop by the Telegraph Station.

A telegraph station was built here in 1871.   It was part of the line of telegraph poles, lines and repeater stations that stretched from Adelaide to Darwin, and which connected Australia to Java and London.   Morse code was used to relay messages.

We travelled by car along the initial part of the MacDonnell Ranges, both East and West.    As these were part of National Parks we had to leave Piper in the car when we made short walking trips.  We also could not take photographs of paintings on the rocks.

The rock formations were stunning.

Although it was overcast, it was still possible to see the colours and layers of rock.

The start of the West MacDonnell ranges.    They form many rows of high rocky outcrops.   Quite stunning from the air, I would imagine.    

The Dreamtime stories tell about the formation of the gaps in the ranges, in that the caterpillars weaved their way through and around the ranges, creating gaps as they went about their journeys.    

The original people who lived here were the Aboriginal Arrernte people.   They are the traditional custodians of Alice Springs and continue to observe traditional law, look after the country and teach their children Arrernte language and the importance of culture.   They tell how the landscape surrounding Alice Springs, including the MacDonnell Ranges, was created by the actions of their ancestors, the caterpillar beings Ayepearenye, Ntyarike and Utnerrengatye. 

A huge sculpture of one of the caterpillars. 

We were so fortunate to be in the caravan park opposite the Araluen Cultural Precinct and spent much time over there.

There was a large theatre, with stunning coloured windows depicting Aboriginal stories.

Plus an art gallery.    A sculpture of a brolga.

Paintings by Albert Namatjira.

We drank excellent coffee on the terrace of the cafe.    The gardens were filled with native plants and trees.  And surrounding the area were green lawns, a dry creek bed plus a large playground.   There was an art and craft workshop with an attached shop where I managed to spend quite a few dollars.   Walter also went through the Aviation Museum there.

Sadly we were unable to see everything in Alice Springs such as the School of the Air, Women's Museum of Australia, Old Ghan Museum plus many more places of interest.

Reluctantly we packed up on the Sunday morning, drank our last coffee at the cafe, and set off towards Uluru.

After about ten minutes we found ourselves outside the airport, having continued on the main road, instead of taking the Stuart Highway, which was a slip road slightly to the right.

We were greeted at the airport by hundreds of aeroplanes from countries around the world.   No doubt in this vast land there is plenty of room to store aeroplanes until they are needed again, when once again we are free to fly wherever we want to go.

Alice Springs is a definite place to revisit, but perhaps without a dog so that we can visit the national parks.