Dirk and Joke doing the Half-lap: Day 68: We meet the rock in the middle of Australia (08/08/12)

We got up at leisure and watched other people leave before us. Time for a shower, so we went to the windy shower block and did the best we could. The men’s shower was interesting – no doors at all! But we managed, mainly by putting on a burst of speed. You hardly needed a towel, you were blow-dried by the wind.

But the same wind stood us in good stead as we sailed the last 100 kms into Yulara. Uluru – Yulara: Uluru is the rock and Yulara is the “town”, and the “town” mainly consists of the Ayers Rock Resort.

Our camp at Ayers Rock Resort. Red dust and a concrete slab.

We got there bright and early, set up, had coffee, and went off to have a look at this rock. We had glimpsed it on the way, but had not had a good look at it.

Well, it is pretty impressive, rising out of the flat plain as it does.

A first look at Uluru

A photograph or two (or 100) is taken

Up close it looks pock-marked here and there

In fact The Rock has a very bad case of acne in places.

We got up close, taking photographs as we went and proceeded to circumnavigate it, stopping here and there to take a close-up look. We stopped at the place where you can climb the Rock. It took us quite a while to read all the notices and warnings and pleadings not to climb, all the while watching literally dozens of folk on their way up or down. That it is a dangerous undertaking, I can well believe – it is steep and smooth and if you lost your footing and got a good roll going it would be hard to stop without denting an essential part of your anatomy – like your skull! That it was not politically correct to climb was very obvious, but it was put to us as tourists in the words of bureaucrats and academics, not words that would be used by the traditional owners. This was a feature of Uluru, around the rock, at Kata Tjuta and at the interpretation centre: the traditional owners were glaringly absent and the information was a post-modern mishmash of scientific theory and traditional beliefs which had most likely seen the light of day in Canberra offices rather than under the Central Australian sun.

Anyway, I climbed up the Rock as far as the start of the chain, and then sat down to catch my breath. On the path right at the bottom there was a cleft in the rock with a long brown snake in it. It must have been pretty confused by all the comings and goings.

Intrepid climbers. A surprising number of them were foreign tourists.

This snake just wished everyone would go away. "Lisssssten, jussssst go away, willya" it hissed, "and leave me in peaccccce."

From my modest vantage point, I had a good view of Kata Tjuta, about 45 kms away.

Woman taking picture of foolish husband on rock.

Foolish husband on rock.

We continued around the rock in the hot afternoon sun,

Aboriginal drawings in the "Boy's Cave"

Three old men sitting in the "Old Men's Cave"

The back side of the rock. Somehow it did not look as impressive

Juvenile desert oaks at the Interpretation Centre.

checked out the interpretation centre and checked where we would go for the sunset viewing. This has been completely orchestrated by the authorities, cars this way, buses that way. Little did we realise how many people would be there to see the sunset! There were hundreds of cars where we were, including heaps of foreign tourists.

It was like Friday afternoon rush hour at the Sunset Viewing Area.

When you arrive early at a sunset viewing, you have to wait a long time for THE MOMENT. If it is your first time, you don't really know what to expect. Anyhow, to while away the time you take pictures of flowers.

You take pictures of people taking pictures. Or is he checking his beard? (I'm being a bit snobbish here, and got my come-uppance the next night when we sat down together with this gentleman and his wife for dinner at Curtin Springs. My ears are/were burning..)