Emily's Gap and Kata Tjuta

Emily's Gap

Caterpillar dreaming art at Emily's Gap

Conor, next to Mt Connor!

View from the sand dune behind our trailer last night

Round 1 of breakfast buffet

Valley of the Winds at Kata Tjuta

Being blown away in the Valley of the Winds

Yesterday we got a few jobs done in Alice Springs and stopped briefly at the beginning of the East McDonnell Ranges to have a look at Emily’s Gap. It’s a beautiful spot only 10k out of town which has some aboriginal rock art – apparently it is where the three caterpillars that are part of Alice Springs’ dreamtime story originated. It’s interesting that the rock art in the NT seems to be made freely available to tourists to look at, whereas in WA you’re basically asked not to go to any of the areas where there is art, as the local indigenous people would rather you didn’t look at it. I can understand from a preservation point of view, but it’s really nice to be able to see some here.

After that we hit the highway and headed down to Uluru – it’s really a long way away (from anywhere) so it was hours of driving, but at least on tarmac. We stopped briefly at Mt Connor (how could we not?) for a photo opportunity. It’s a pretty impressive mountain – more than twice the size of Uluru apparently, but unfortunately as it’s on private property you can’t go and have a look … unless you’d like to go on a full day tour costing $135 each.   We arrived as the sun was starting to go down so we got a bit of a preview of what the sunset view will be like, and set up in our nice spacious campsite at Yulara. It’s a funny place Yulara, basically a little town created just to cater for tourists with 3 hotels, a campsite, post office, police station, doctor, fire station, little supermarket etc etc, and still 20k away from the rock. We have a great site though because right behind us is a little sand dune which we can walk up to the top of, and have a fantastic almost uninterrupted view of Uluru, which I had a look at first thing this morning (along with lots of other campers).

The kids were excited to wake up because last night Jane rang to let us know that her and Patrick had bought us vouchers for the breakfast buffet at the hotel that they stayed at when here in January. I think the price might go up soon after the amount we ate though…. Nick had a mountain of pancakes, Conor ate his body weight in bacon, Daniel cleaned out the sausages, and I think the only things I didn’t try at least once were the cereal, the sushi and the cheese. It was a real treat anyway, and set us up for the day – it’s 5.30pm and we still haven’t had lunch, only a few bits of fruit while on a walk.

We started out at the Cultural Centre in the national park which gives lots of information about Uluru and the local Anagu people, and then as we’d missed the free ranger walk in the morning we decided to go to Kata Tjuta today instead. It’s about 50k away, although we also have a good view of it in the distance from the campsite. The domes are pretty cool, they’re made out of conglomerate rock (as opposed to the sandstone of Uluru) and I think there’s 26 of them, from memory. The only downside is that there isn’t any information there about them (not on the walk we went on anyway), and even though they can’t apparently provide information about the cultural side of the domes (secret mens’ business), it would be good to have some information about the actual rocks or flora and fauna. It was a lovely walk anyway, through the Valley of the Winds, going over the edge of some domes and between others, and it helped to burn off some of the breakfast!