Visiting Ayers Rock

Our next adventure took us to Ayers Rock (whose Aboriginal name is Uluru) which is south and west of Alice Springs. We went by bus and it took about five hours. We made several stops (thank heavens) for photos, potty breaks, and sightseeing. One of the stops was a camel farm where several people rode a camel (not me). We were traveling through desert, with lots of scrub brush, red earth, and rocks.

We stopped at Curtain Springs cattle station and found out they ran cattle through much of the area we were driving through. The station was founded in the late 1800’s and had been in the family ever since. The ranchers lease the land – they cannot own it. On this huge acreage they only have about 4000 head of cattle which is about all the available water and vegetation can support. They use a water trap to muster the cows! It is a fenced in watering hole (the only place they can drink) and when they want to cull cattle, they just close the gate and trap the ones that are inside. It is a fascinating enterprise, but very isolated.

We stayed in another beautiful resort, the Desert Gardens. We spent several hours driving around Urulu and took several walks to get up close and personal. We were there to watch the sunset as it lit up the rock and turned it many colors.

Don, sunrise at Uluru

The next morning we were up at 5 a.m. to drive back to view the sunrise at the rock. The clouds and the colors were just fantastic. Later in the day we drove to another famous land formation, Kata Tjuta to walk the Walpa Gorge. Urulu is the second largest rock in Australia, basically made of sandstone. Kata Tjuta  is a conglomerate mountain. They are both sacred to the indigenous people, the Anangu and are the key features in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.

Suzanne at Walpa Gorge

As we were traveling through this part of Australia (also called the Outback) we learned a lot about the Aboriginal people and how they used the land, the animals, and the vegetation. They live by a principle called Tjukurpa (chook-er-par). This is taught to people via stories and song, and also involves the law. The stories teach what is right and wrong, how to conduct themselves in certain situations, and how to look after the environment. They believe in spirit beings that lived on earth before humans and created the features of the natural world and are the ancestors of all living things. Where they left physical evidence of their presence (such as Urulu) that becomes a sacred site and the place where many Aboriginal rituals are held.