Sydney to Darwin: day five

Day five: Uluru

Sunset at Uluru (1)

At the end of our fourth day, we went to Uluru to watch the sunset. The cloud was thick on the wrong side (ie. the side of the sun) and there was almost no light cast onto the rock. The only glimpse of magic we had lasted about 10 seconds and somehow I managed to capture it just as a beam of light escaped from the thick cloud cover and flitted across one corner of the rock.

While sitting in the carpark, I realised that I had already seen more than 10,000 sunsets in my life, and it made me wonder how many of them are actually imprinted on my mind.

The hidden sun

The next day we got up in the dark to go to Uluru for sunrise. The sky brightened as we drove into the park, and it was almost a race against the sun. Unlike the previous day where buses & cars are segregated (the poor and the rich, perhaps?), this was all congregated in one spot and there were hundreds of people all vying for the best spot. We tried out several viewing spots, finally settling for a small hut at the edge of the viewing zone, away from the crowds.

As the sun rose, the rock became progressively redder, though the cloud cover made the sun’s powerful rays wax and wane in its effect on the rock. At its reddest, the rock looked like it was a giant loaf of bread covered in tandoori paste.

Sunrise at Uluru

We had breakfast in a little hut near the cultural centre, which was blissfully quiet; I think most bus groups were off somewhere having breakfast. The centre has a sorry book where people wrote letters in about how taking bits of the rock away have brought them bad luck. It’s funny how people have a conscience about these things, almost like they would attribute their bad luck to the one thing they feel guilty about. Lots of people climb the rock too, which is specifically not advised by the Park and by the Aboriginal owners.

We spent the rest of the morning on a guided walk up close to the rock. The ranger was an interesting character, quite informed of the ways of the Indigenous people. He painted vivid images of how the Aboriginal people had lived in this land for the last 22,000 years before the White people came – they have always hunted, fished, foraged for seeds, berries and fruit, lit fires and told stories from generation to generation. It is an entire culture and lifestyle which has now mostly disappeared, which is just incredible if one thinks about the enormity of the loss to that culture.

Touching Uluru

I always thought Uluru was perfectly round and really red, but actually it's quite irregular on its surface and has multiple layers of rock squashed all together from its time under the sea. There were many caves where people used to seek shelter, some of which had some amazing rock formations.

In an Uluru cave

After an afternoon nap, we decided to give sunset one more go, and this time were rewarded with a spectacular postcard-perfect Uluru sunset. Every time I looked up I thought the colour was changing again! I was mesmerised by the evolving and deepening colour, and must have taken at least 50 photos in the same spot!

Sunset at Uluru (2)