Day 38 – Uluṟu

Happy birthday, Alexander! I think I explained earlier, but this year everyone’s birthday present is an experience as part of our holiday. And Alexander received an Uluṟu sunrise tour.

We were all up at 5:15am this morning, getting dressed and ready to head out to a sunrise viewing tour called Desert Awakenings. We headed out on a fun 4WD bus in pitch black, across a long dirt track. At one point, I looked at the map on my phone and realised we were actually going away from Uluru, and I was worried we weren’t going to be able to see it at sunrise! But I was gladly wrong. We headed out to a beautiful place called Tali Wiru, which means beautiful sand dune – and it really was. There’s a small paved platform, and from there, you get an amazing view over Uluṟu and Kata-Tjuṯa and the desert surrounding them. We all enjoyed a delicious breakfast – fruit, pastries and bacon & egg rolls, along with tea and coffee and juice. That was all served and brought over as the earliest light started to appear on the horizon – so we got to enjoy it as, gradually, the sun peaked over the horizon in a spectacular way. Watching the desert and Uluṟu come to life with all that light was amazing!

Watching the sunrise and having breakfast was only just the start of the day! With the sun up and the day well under way we headed off for to our next stop. Along the way, our guide Jack was telling us a lot about the creation stories that the Aṉangu have for Uluṟu – he was great at just telling us little bits along the way, and linking it with exactly where we were around Uluṟu, and picking up the story again later on.

The next stop was the Mala Walk into Kantju Gorge, on the western side of Uluṟu. It was a walk we’d planned to do this afternoon actually, not realising it was going to be part of the tour! This part was self-guided – we had about an hour to walk along, and just read all the signs. There was so much to take in – every part of Uluṟu has a story to tell and is significant in a certain way to the Aṉangu. It was also beautiful to be doing this at about 8:30am too – it wasn’t too busy at all, and there was still the coolness of the morning in the air.

We next visited the Kuniya Walk, where Jack took us on a guided tour, pointing out so many more aspects of life for the Aṉangu, and also their creation and dreaming stories. This was again one of those times where there was just so much to take in and learn that it almost feels overwhelming. But it was all so amazing, and the kids took so much of it in as well and really stayed interested the whole way.

Lastly, we headed to the Cultural Centre. I don’t think I’d fully appreciated that this was so much more than a visitors centre and art gallery / souvenir shop. It has quite an extensive set of exhibits and information about Aṉangu culture – so much of the information we’d actually been able to see and hear first hand as we’d been driving and walking with Jack, but there was still so much more.

This afternoon back at the resort, we grabbed a few things from the supermarket to get ourselves ready for tonight – we figured if we’ve been able to watch Uluṟu at sunrise, we should also watch Uluṟu at sunset on the same day! We headed into the proper sunset viewing area in the National Park at about 5pm and staked out a spot. We went armed with enough snacks to basically make it dinner, and some other things to keep us entertained for an hour or so. We got to give my Mum a quick FaceTime as well, as she wanted to say Happy Birthday to Alexander – talk about all-time locations for a FaceTime call.

It was a really relaxing and wonderful way to spend the evening – the kids played handball for a while, we chatted with an older couple who’d pulled up in the carpark beside us, and then we ate some snacks and watched Uluṟu as the sun set. The kids came and went a little bit, but they really did enjoy watching Uluṟu change gradually as the sun went down – even it was the second night in a row they’d watched it. And it was so much more incredible being so close to it this evening. It’s been great to be able to do the sunsets and sunrises from 3 different perspectives over the last couple of days.

Tomorrow, we head further into the Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park to explore Kata Tjuṯa.