Alice Springs – Day 5, 16 May 2012

My swag by pre-dawn camp fire

Ooh, it got cold sleeping in the swag! The first night I was using a knitted jacket as a booster pillow but managed to put it on without getting out of the sleeping bag. The next night I wore the clothes that I was going to wear the next day and put thermals over the top. I wasn't going to have a shower that second night – hot water but freezing once you turned the taps off - but got covered in carbon when collecting wood for the camp fire – the wood came from burned trees. But then, it's been cold in bed at my hotel. The nights in this area are cold. All the same, it was fun looking up at all the stars and, the second night, with the flames leaping …. and getting smoked.

Uluru at sunrise

Kata Tjuta at dawn

I didn't freeze too long in the swag. It was up and at it at 5.15am both mornings. First to get to Kata Tjuta for sunrise. From the viewing area you could see both Uluru and what used to be called the Olgas. Then on to do the 'Valley of the Winds' walk. It was quite a bit shorter than walking around Uluru but degree of difficulty was way higher. So much so that I decided not to do the rim walk at King's Canyon. More great scenery, up and down rough hills and dales. I slipped sideways on gravel at one point and two or three of the young ones kept an eye on me thereafter! Afterwards I read that walk is rated 'difficult'. Might have guessed! Next, lunch and on to King's Creek Station for the second night.

Valley of the Winds map

Valley of the Winds

Kata Tjuta

Kata Tjuta

I was more useful collecting firewood en route than I was at kitchen duties. Also en route we stopped to look at a salt lake. Walking up the dune to see it we walked on the softest, finest red sand. Beautiful stuff.

Salt lake, red sand

Collecting firewood

It's been many years since I sat by a fire outdoors, back to bonfire night when I was a kid probably. In a 'small world' moment I discovered that one of the backpacker couples had stayed a street away from where I grew up and walked in the park where those childhood bonfires were held. Dinner was interesting. I've always said I wouldn't eat the national emblem or noxious weeds. That still holds true for prickly pear but I did taste kangaroo. Don't need to try it again. Camel either. That was on the lunch menu. On the other hand, the damper was great!

Damper

Warming my toes

And so to bed for my second night in a swag, 15,200 rather tough steps later.

Alice Springs - Day 4, 15 May 2012

Mt Conner

Too early in the morning I was collected by a bus that finished up with 20 passengers + driver and drove for about four hours arriving at Yulara, near Uluru, for lunch. Lunch was the same as on the Western Macdonnell Ranges tour – just as well it was good, a lovely fresh salad roll, fruit, and juice. There'd been the morning tea stop and the look-out stop at Mt Conner, an impressive mesa standing in solitary isolation, unlike those I saw in the US on the California Zephyr train journey which had plenty of similarly magnificent companions.

Uluru Walks Map

Then we set off for Uluru itself. Would I do the walk, wouldn't I, would I take up the offer of being driven to the half-way mark? I decided I couldn't cop out at the first opportunity so off I set, optimistically but with fingers also crossed. 

The rock is so impressive from a distance but was hard to take in up close. But there were the unexpected features – rock paintings, a grinding 'pan' used by aboriginal women, chunks that seemed to have sheered off, the tracks of waterfalls that cascade in a deluge, cracks caused by lightning strikes and, surprisingly to me, a water hole with a very faint trickle of water running down the rock into it.

Mutitjulu water hole

Rock art

Grinding 'pan'

Chunk of rock

I felt really chuffed when I made it to the end of the 10.6km base walk circuit. And what's more, I was still able to walk an extra 300m to reach the loo! 19,100 steps for the day.

In spite of an emphatic spiel from our terrific guide, one person on tour climbed to the top of the chain on the rock climb. Whether out of respect or simple fear, no one else attempted to climb Uluru. I hadn't realised that at handover to the aboriginal people, it was written into the deal that the rock remain open to climbs because the government feared tourism would fall and that it can be closed to climbing once the number of visitors climbing drops to 20%. Currently it's down to 28% apparently, and tourism has boomed in spite of the request not to climb.

Uluru sunset

After the walk it was a quick drive to the sunset viewing area. To be honest, the changing colours of sunset wasn't all that exciting. Perhaps by then I was quaking at the thought of the rapidly approaching night sleeping outdoors in a sleeping bag for the first time in my life. First there was chicken stir fry for dinner. But it couldn't be put off any longer – the lovely hot shower, shivering in the cold when the taps were turned off, then into the swag.

Chicken stir fry