Footloose in Oceania: Day 63: Kata Tjuta & Uluru (Ayers Rock)

note: added pictures to Day 62 -- but no commentary. Today I have the best high-speed internet so far -- but too tired to write more.

Today we drove from Alice Springs to Yulara (the resort town near Uluru -- it's just 3 hotels and a "town centre" -- by far the biggest town since Alice Springs -- actually the only town)

Tour is going well -- but it's fast-paced in that I have to wake up early every morning -- and covering lots of miles in a bus. Today we left Alice Springs at 6:30am -- tomorrow we have to check out of the hotel by 5:30am (to see the sunrise over Uluru).

My pictures of Kata Tjuta and Uluru don't do either of them justice.

Today's stops:

Coffee break at a camel farm. Camels were brought into Australia around 1850 to help explore / develop the Western and Northern Territories. By the 1920s they were no longer needed -- so they were released into the wild. We saw some feral camels yesterday during our drive.
Roadhouse in the outback. There is absolutely nothing after Alice Springs -- just a lot of cattle stations (ranches). I think there are also Indigenous communities -- but you can't see them from the road. A lot of the cattle stations are huge -- something like 1 million acres.
Mount Connor (aka Attila / Artilla). People often mistake Mount Connor for Uluru --- so it's also known as FoolUluru. It's a flat-topped mesa and is part of the same vast rocky substrate though to be beneath Kata Tjuta and Uluru.
Kata Tjuta (means "many heads") also known as The Olgas. Group of 36 large domed rock formations made up of conglomerate -- a sedimentary rock consisting of cobbles and boulders of varying rock types including granite and basalt, cemented by a matrix of sandstone. Highest point is 3,497 ft. We went for a 2.5km walk into a gorge between the domes. The rocks are a beautiful red color when the sun hits them. Looks very lush because of all of the rain that they had last week. The domes were created 550 million years ago during the Petermann Orogeny.
Sunset at Uluru / Ayers Rock. We were treated to wine and snacks while we watched the sunset. The sun set behind us -- not behind the rock. Beautiful to watch the changing colors of the rock and the sky. Uluru is an inselberg. An inselberg is a prominent isolated residual knob or hill that rises abruptly from and is surrounded by extensive and relatively flat erosion lowlands in a hot, dry region. The remarkable feature of Ulurus is its homogeneity and lack of jointing and parting at bedding surfaces.

Note: The actual rock that makes up Kata Tjuta and Uluru is medium to dark gray with green or pink hues. The bright orange-red hue is due to a patina over feldspar coated iron oxide.

Both Kata Tjuta and Uluru are sacred sites to the local Indigenous people.

Kata Tjuta

Mount Olga is the home of the snake Wanambi. The hairs of his beard are the dark lines on the eastern side of the rock. His breath is the wind which blows through the gorge; when he gets angry it can become a hurricane.
The domed rocks on the eastern side are identified with ancestors known as the mice women; food prepared for them are 2 large rocks near the end of Mount Olga.
Rocks in the SW portion are where the poisonous snake men, the Liru, make their camp before setting out to attack the harmless carpet snakes at Uluru.
The point rocks on the east is Malu, a kangaroo man, who is dying of wounds inflicted by dingoes. Malu leans on a rock which is his sister, Mulumura, a lizard woman, who cradles him in her arms.
Also present are the stone bodies of the Pungalunga, giant cannibals.

Uluru - two tribes of ancestral spirits were invited to a feast in the area, but became distracted by beautiful Sleepy Lizard Women and dallied at a waterhole. Angry at being stood up, the waiting hosts sang evil into a mud sculpture that came to life as the dingo. There was a terrible slaughter followed by a great battle, which ended in the deaths of the leaders of both tribes. The earth iself rose up in grief at the bloodshed -- and this is Uluru.