ULURU: Embracing my nerdiness

Karen and I at the Uluru sunset lookout

I went to Uluru and Kata Tjuta with Karen on the weekend of October 9th.  We realized when we arrived that we really hadn’t planned out what we wanted to do.  We had a car though, so it gave us the freedom to explore the Uluru National Park at our own will.  We stayed in a permanent tent, which was awesome.  The first day, after exploring the ‘downtown’ area a bit, we drove up to Uluru and hiked around the base.  It was fantastic.  It is hard to understand just how barren and expansive the outback really is without seeing it, and Uluru and Kata Tjuta were literally the only things there.  After the base hike, we drove to a lookout and watched the sun set on Uluru. 

Valley of the Winds Hike

The next day, we woke up early and rode Rodney the camel nbd.  We didn’t book early enough to do the epic Uluru camel ride, so it was more of a City Day fall fest ride around the ring deal, but it was still awesome.  Then we headed out to Kata Tjuta, where we did the Valley of the Winds hike.  This was definitely my favorite part of the trip.  Little did we know before the hike that Kata Tjuta was composed of CONGLOMERATES (aka a bunch of different rock bits smushed together, so scientific).  That was the best.  The hike wound in and out of the Olgas and had some awesome views.  We finished that hike pretty quickly, and had time to hike the Walpa Gorge afterwards, which was cool but pretty short.  After that, we headed to the Kata Tjuta look out to watch the sunset. 

Kata Tjuta at sunset

The next morning, we woke up and went on a ranger hike around part of Uluru.  This was cool because the ranger talked about some of the Aboriginal significance of Uluru, which tied in nicely to some of the things we had learned about in Burnett’s class (so much education!).   Once this was over, it was time to head back to the airport and get back to UOW.

Some basic statistics from the weekend:

Number of the same Uluru picture that Karen took:  around 39

Number of times we got lost walking in a loop:  2

Number of times sassy food counter man gave us extra food because we were American:  2

Number of 39 cent kiwis we ate: 14

Number of people who judged us for stopping to look at the geology on our hikes:  infinite
Number of assignments I had within 3 days of returning:  4

OMG IT'S ULURU

Fun fact:  The outback is red!  This is because the sediments contain iron, which reacts with oxygen to form a rusty red color.