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From Watarrka to Uluru
I hiked back on the Giles Track the same way I had come the day before, excited by the prospect of seeing Uluru, the legendary Ayers Rock. I reached the car within a couple of hours and eagerly headed back down the highway to the turnoff that led to Uluru, the furthest place I would reach from my starting point in Sydney. As I turned to the west, the landscape seemed to become wilder, more desolate, more overpowering. The earth was bright red, dotted with patches of Desert Oak and small scrubby bushes. The land was mostly flat, with small undulating hills, until the lone profile of Mount Connor appeared on the horizon. Mount Connor is the same type of rock as Ayers Rock, a massive monolith that rises like an island in the empty desert. Another few kilometres past Mount Connor, the magical sight of Uluru, the Aboriginal name for Ayers Rock, came into view.
I reached the campground at Yulara, the little resort town outside of Uluru National Park. I checked in and went to pitch my tent in a quiet grassy area. I then went for a walk around the town, which was spread out over a large area in between little hills that offered views of Uluru and Kata Tjuta. I stopped in at a bookstore and picked up a map and book about the national park, as well as a few t-shirts and souvenirs.
I had a few hours of light left that afternoon, enough time to see a little bit of the park. I wanted to hike around the circumfrence of Uluru, but decided to save that for sunrise the next morning, when the light would be changing rapidly and revealing the many tones of the massive rock. Instead, I drove to Kata Tjuta, the Aboriginal name for the Olgas, about 50 kilometres away. I picked up a couple of hitchhikers along the way, a woman from Israel and a man from Nimbun, in New South Wales.
Kata Tjuta has the same red ochre color of Uluru, but a very different shape. It is a series of 36 rounded domes, looking like big red lumps of clay that have been plopped onto the desert floor. The highest dome is Mount Olga, which at 546 meters (1,791 feet) in elevation, is the highest point in the national park, even higher than Uluru. The photographer Arthur Groom described them eloquently, stating that "The smallest dome could have crowned the world's greatest cathedral and the greatest was a red immensity of rock that would have completely dwarfed the same ediface."
We reached Kata Tjuta and my hitchhiker friends set off on their own, barefoot, to wander around the many domes. I hiked into the Valley of the Winds on a trail that makes a loop through the heart of Kata Tjuta, feeling like a pilgrim wandering through the temples of ancient Rome.
Halfway around the loop, I climbed to a dramatic pass in between two of the highest domes. It was getting late in the day and the sun was starting to turn the red rocks into brilliant beacons of light rising above the desert floor. From the top of the pass, I looked down into a valley, with more domes in the distance.
I finished the six-kilometer hike and met up with the hitchhikers back at the car. We drove back to Yulara, talking about the amazing landscape and the feeling of being in a place that touches the human spirit in such a profound way. There really was a spiritual charge in the atmosphere that gave us all a warm glowing feeling inside.
Next up: The Circumfrence of Uluru
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