Uluru Magic

Uluru Magic: World Cup Russia 2018

Wednesday was going to be a busy day,... What with checking out of our hotel, picking up our Campervan, dropping off the rental car, and provisioning for a week in the Outback, and then leaving Alice Springs and driving 450kms to Yulara. But like with many good plans, everything fell into place like clockwork, and by 11:00am we were doing some hard mileage in the van. I think both Fiona & I were a little nervous about driving this 7m long behemoth of a campervan at first, but as the road slipped behind us, we soon got used to it. The road was long but scenic with a few stops along the way, the main one for coffee, but by 5:00pm we rolled into our campground 

After this long drive and our first cooked meal in the Campervan that we are

now re-naming to ‘Dilbert’, we got ourselves ready for an early night. Converting the seating area into the bed was more effort than we both would have expected, and then making up the bed with sheets and duvet’s seemed intensively laborious, but once we were finally in the bed, we soon drifted off to sleep.... So whilst sleeping in a campervan is significantly better than sleeping in a tent, it shares some of the initial discomforts and niggles, especially on the first night.  Trying to find a comfortable position was a struggle at first, and as you can imagine, every time I rolled over the van would move with me a little, and I am sure that Fiona was dreaming of earthquakes. I woke a few times in the night to try and find a better position, but even though it was rather cold, I think we were both warm enough and overall got a reasonable nights sleep. 

We were both awake early but as it was so cold it was a struggle for us to get out from under the warm duvet, so we didn’t surface for a couple of hours. For those of you that regularly travel in a campervan, you will fully understand what I mean when I talk about the intricate ballet that has to be performed by 2 people sharing such a confined space and believe me, this was not as small as it could have been. If we both started moving about at the same we would end up either bumping into each other or various cabinets or drawers, so I reluctantly stayed under the duvet while Fiona made breakfast, but after negotiating our complex dressing maneuvers we managed to get ready to head into the Uluru / Kata Tjata National Park.

Dilbert cruised briskly through the park gates and along the winding roads between the dunes towards the imposing orange monolith called Uluru, once known as Ayres Rock. As we got closer it didn’t matter what angle you viewed it from, some new detail, shape or colour would present itself. We headed to the Cultural Centre to get a flavour of what this sacred place meant to the local indigenous peoples and learn something of the history before jumping back in the van to get up close and personal with the Rock. We first visited the sacred waterhole and then the sunrise viewing spot, then completing a full circuit before stopping for a spot of lunch. This is where traveling in Dilbert comes into its own as we just pulled over into one of the many viewing areas and made up our lunch. As it had taken so much effort to make up the bed the night before, we had not bothered to take it down, so we luxuriated in the back for a while eating lunch before heading out on another circuit, this time with Fiona driving so I could get a good view.

We wanted to get a good position for the sunset later that evening, but we also

wanted to do a few night-time activities that needed to be booked, so we headed back to Yalara. Fiona booked us into a guided Astronomy tour for that evening, and a light display the following evening, after which we tooled around for a short while before heading back into the park again. We got to the designated sunset viewing area nice an early and early and pulled out our sliding BBQ and started making Dinner so that we could have it and watch the sun go down. I am beginning to like this campervan thing....

As we prepared a chicken salad, the car park started to fill up and by the time we sat down to eat and watch the spectacle, the place was suddenly heaving. We had a great position to watch in wonder as the colours on the rock changed from a brilliant yellow to bright orange to a dark red ochre, and all the colours in-between. It was truly stunning and even after the sun went down and the rock grew darker and darker, we sat and watched while many of the other viewers slipped away. Finally, we jumped back in Dilbert and drove back in the twilight towards our campground, where we would pull-in and hook up to power before heading off to the Astronomy tour. 

There is always something to see in the night sky, and even though we had a three-quarter moon giving off enough light to give us shadows, we still managed to learn something new from our jocular guide ‘Eddie”. We had a brief discussion about the night sky and about the size of space, (it’s BIG by the way), and then we looked through a couple of telescopes focused on distant stars and nebular that were visible on this night, and Fiona even got a great photo of the Moon through one of the telescopes. With the excitement over, it had been a good day, and we headed back to Dilbert for the night, with a plan of getting up at ridiculous-o'clock to watch the Sunrise over Uluru.




The alarm sounded at 6:20am the next morning, and after throwing on some

clothes and a quick pee, we were on the road to the sunrise viewing platform on the other side of the park. We arrive just before sun-up to join the other 200-300 intrepid souls who had also thought this to be a good idea... I did manage to find a reasonable position from which to view the sunrise, but it felt somewhat shallower with these many people around me, and while the view did not disappoint, the rugby scrum of amateur photographers and Japanese tourists did.  The saving grace was that Fiona and I walked back to the car park and started to prepare breakfast while everyone else got in their appropriate transport to be whisked away to the next photo opportunity. Meanwhile, we sat down to an egg sandwich and a pot of plunger coffee in the ever-increasing warmth of the sun, and by the time we had finished our leisurely breakfast and packed up, we were one of only a handful of cars left in the car park from the 100’s that had been there when we arrived.

Next on our agenda was to visit the Kata Tjata formations, (formally called ‘The Olgas’), about 40kms west of Uluru. I’m not sure where all the rest of the crowds had gone, but we had a very quiet ride out to KataTjata, with only a handful of other vehicles on the road. We spent a couple of hours hiking up and back to a viewing point between the domes and then back for lunch before having a mid-afternoon siesta in the back of Dilbert, which was still made up as a bed. This is the life... Eventually, we took a meandering drive back to our campsite and took our own sweet time making a lovely steak and salad for dinner. 

The evening’s entertainment was to go to an art installation called “Field of

Lights”, which as the name suggests, was actually a field of lights. Having said that, it was about 300,000 hand-blown, fibre-optic, ever-changing coloured solar lights spread over a 12-acre site, which was quite impressive. We got to walk amongst these lights for a while, and even though we tried to capture the scene, our cameras did not do it justice. This was to be our last night in the Ayres Rock Campground, so we tidied Dilbert up a little before bringing this long couple of days at Uluru to close. Tomorrow we would hit the road and head south.