Trip to the Red Centre

The reason one goes to the Red Centre, Ayers Rock, or Uluru as it has always been called by the Aboriginals, and is once again by Australians (and tourists), is to see the sun set on The Rock. While the town of Ayers Rock (and the airport) is referred to now as Uluru, that is actually the Aboriginal name of the rock itself. It is considered a very sacred place by the local Anangu People. The rock itself is a sandstone/iron formation upthrust millions of years ago when what is now Australia was a gigantic sea. When the sun is out, which is most of the time apparently (more on that later), it is a giant reddish/orange mass, but at sunrise and sunset, it almost glows. Apparently. In 2015 we were here as part of our tour, for one night, which was apparently (that word again) the ONLY overcast afternoon in the entire summer of 2015, meaning we didn't see the sunset. With no sun, it's just a big brown rock. To rectify that, we decided to come back, only this time we had built in some redundancy against clouds, staying two nights, to (apparently) insure we would see a sunset.

There are no direct flights from Melbourne to Ayers Rock (the airport), so that necessitated a 7:30 AM flight from Melbourne to Sydney, connecting on to Ayers Rock. Larry had booked this through an Australian tour operator at work who put us on Virgin Australia, a first for us, and one we will probably look at repeating in future as we really liked the service. The flights were smooth and uneventful, and we even had the Business Class cabin to ourselves on the flight from Sydney. Almost like being on a private plane, except for the 100 pairs of jealous eyes behind us!!! Although Ayers Rock is located in the desert outback, they have had a LOT of rain lately. On Boxing Day they got 270 MM of rain (5.5 inches), the equivalent of all the rain they have had the past two years combined! This explains why everything looks so green in the pictures!

You know the airport is not overly busy when it has one runway, which also doubles as the taxiway. Planes land, roll out to the end, turn around and taxi back UP the runway to the terminal. According to a sign outside, the airport opens at 10:00 AM and closes at 4:30 PM. And we stepped out of the nice, air conditioned plane into an oven!!! It had been hot in Melbourne, and we knew it would be hot in Uluru, but 42 C +....................... After collecting our bags we were bussed to our hotel, Sails in the Desert, one of five, and the nicest one, that comprise the Ayers Rock Resort. And surprising us not at all, our room was not ready.

Lawn and pool area, busy most days between 1 and 5 pm when
everyone is taking a break from the hottest part of the day

The lobby

As part of the tour package we were booked into two "sunset" dinners, Sounds of Silence on Monday and Fields of Light on Tuesday. The dinner experience for both is the same. Bus out to an overlook for sunset accompanied by sparkling wine. Bush Tucker (Aussie Outback delicacies) buffet dinner, followed by stargazing, then return to the hotel. Things were looking pretty promising when the bus picked us up at 6:30, with scattered clouds, but more blue sky than clouds. Apparently (there's that word again) we were actually going to see a sunset. Then we ran through rain showers on the way out to the lookout. We are now 0-for-2 on sunsets on Uluru, but we did get some great shots of the sunset behind Kata Tjuta, the OTHER sacred rock formation about a kilometre away. But there was still stargazing, and while there was cloud around, directly above was clear, and as the sun set, we did see Orion (upside down in the Southern Hemisphere), the almost full moon, which wiped out a lot of stars and an unknown planet that we figured would be identified by our star talker. And it probably would have been, if we could have seen it. While we were finishing dinner, the "scattered clouds" decided to scatter directly above us. We are 0-for-1 on stargazing!

From the bus on the way to the sunset viewing area

Deep sunset over Kata Tjuta; this is exactly the colour of the sky!

The tables at the Sounds of Silence Dinner

Sunset on Uluru

Just after the sun went down. Not as exciting as Kata Tjuta

The other Uluru "event" that we did not see last time was sunrise. Not sure why we didn't see it, but I suspect only being there for one day, and the fact one has to get up before some people have even gone to bed might have had something to do with it. This time we were going "to do" sunrise. So after finally getting to bed at 11:30 PM after NOT seeing the sunset, we were up at 3:30 AM (!!) and on the bus at 4:30 AM to the sunrise overlook. And the sunrise did not disappoint! It was worth getting up at that un-Godly hour for the experience. Like people had said it would be, it was truly magical!

At sunrise, deepest red

Just after sunrise

Kata Tjuta in the distance

As we left to visit Kata Tjuta

Once the sun had risen (which sounds kind of biblical, and did feel like something of a religious experience!), we loaded back up on the buses to head to Kata Tjuta, the other sacred rock formation. This is a formation of twelve rock mounds, which represent the heads of the sacred creatures from the creation story of the Anangu people. According to our driver, who was pretty knowledgeable about the local folklore and customs, since they only have two hands  the Anangu counting system is pretty simple; One, Two, Many. Hence Kata Tjuta translates literally as "many heads". In fact, they are a series of rock mounds, some higher than Uluru, composed mostly of iron, making them similar in appearance to Uluru. The last event on our morning tour was a hike into The Gorge, which runs between the two largest mounds. This is a rather steep and rocky (!!) trail that apparently leads to a small pond. We didn't make it that far, possibly having something to do with the fact it was 38 C at 9:00 AM and the wind felt like a blast furnace in our face.  Or maybe because we were functioning on three hours sleep! Either way, the very real potential for a twisted ankle did not appeal to either of us, so we headed back at the halfway point for the safety of our air conditioned bus, where we discovered quite a few people who had the same thought!! We got back to the hotel just in time to catch the breakfast buffet, then crashed for a couple of hours of sleep, followed by some time in, and around the pool.

On the way. Kata Tjuta was created differently from Uluru,
hence the twisted configuration of the rock

Monica beside one of the rocks that has fallen
off the mound over time. Yes, she's wearing
her mosquito net! And it came in handy again.

Looking up the gorge. You can walk most of it,
but it would take a long time and is both hot
and windy.

Feeling somewhat refreshed from our afternoon of R and R, we were picked up at 6:45 PM for our Field of Light dinner. The Field of Light is an art installation by a British light sculptor, Bruce Munro. It consists of over 50,000 LED lights connected by fibre optic cables and spread out over an area the size of three football (or this being Australia, soccer) fields. The idea is the lights come up as you have dinner and then you walk among the installation. But first, there was the matter of sunset. You recall earlier we mentioned we had built in some redundancy by staying two nights? Mother Nature was having none of that. It was clouds to the horizon in every compass direction, and it stayed that way! The star talker after dinner had a great sense of humour and had everyone laughing as he pointed out where the various constellations would have been, had we been able to see them! Final score, Sunsets 0-for-3, and stargazing 0-for-2! As to the Field of Light, from where we had dinner, it looked like a large city as seen from an airplane. Walking among them was interesting, but nothing special, and in fairness, we were still pretty tired, and it was still 38 C at 10:30 at night, which might have something to do with our less than enthusiastic response. Either way, we were the first ones back to the bus, and were lights out in our room before 11:00 PM.

One of the options for reaching the viewing and dinner
area for Field of Light was by camel - no, we did not do this!
It turns out that the camels that were originally brought to
Australia have bred in the wild and have been exported
to desert areas for military and caravan use, so most
of the camels in northern Africa are actually Australian!!

Sunset

The field of lights. It looks better in the distance when
you can get the groups of colours. We had hoped for
a chance to view from higher up on a hill to get the full effect.

Wednesday, back to Sydney to wrap up this trip! But first, we sleep in!