I woke up ithout time to sort out breakfast for myself, and gt my things ready to get on the bus. I made it to the stop on time, and nobody else was there, though Manon did make it as the bus arrived. Since we had met before last night at the Rock Bar, we knew Vanessa was staying there and Manon went to look for her - we eventually all made it on the bus and introduced ourselves.
We were the last on the bus, and I learned that at this stage I was the only male in a group of 6 other females! I felt somewhat outnumbered and confessed that to them.
Everyone was travelling on their own, the others had mostly been staying at the Haven hostel, though they didn't have great things to say about it.
I've already introduced Vanessa and Manon - today's additions were:
- Justine from England
- Beatrix (Bea) from Gibralta
- Pam from Mexico (living in Germany)
- Kathrin from Germany
The first designated stop for the tour was Stuarts Well, at which Dinky, the singing and piano playing Dingo used to reside. He howls to piano tunes that he makes up, and was apparently something of a tourist attraction in his time!
After this, Terry stopped at a memorial sign for some people who had died in an accident during the naugural cannonball rally. At first nobody got off the bus, then once Bea did, everyone followed suit like sheep, and we laughed about that. The first side of the sign was in Japanese, so I had a go at translating it, though Katakana is quite difficult since it is attempting to phonetically sell foreign words. I managed to impress everyone by getting the first name, by which time they had found the other side which was in English!
We got back on the bus, and headed on to Erl Dunda, the service station stop at the junction from the main North South road and the road to Uluru and King's Canyon. On the way I saw two eagles soaring above the road, and asked Terry what they were, though he wasn't sure, and said they were the biggest ones in Australia, so I suggested possibly Wedge Tailed, which he confirmed.
The scenery here was much more like what I had imagined Australia to be like, with the red sand and scrubby bush, instead of the green rain forest of the east coast areas.
Our next stop was Mount Ebenezer, which was a place that had aboriginal art work n a gallery and available to buy. There was lots of information about the different styles and concepts in the art, and it was possible to see a lot of recurring themes, exploring ideas about the creation of the sisters (Uluru Kata Tjuta and other formations), as well as paintings of herbal medicines and water holes and streams.
At this location, one of the people behind the counter looked like one of the boys at Alice Springs who had been harrassing Vanessa, though she didn't notice, both Terry and I had made a double take
Throughout the journey at this stage we had chatted a bit about where we were from, sometimes doing our own thing, sometimes getting involved, but we mostly seemed to be getting on quite well.
Terry had promised us all that he would show us something that made us all go 'aww', and that moment arrived at the next stop, where we could see Mount Connor - it was a large raised section of the desert that to the uninitiated eye could appear to be uluru, hence the 'aww' reaction.
This whole landscape area used to be sea bed, so is sand stone, mount connor itself is older than Uluru, by approximately 200 million years. Not taking in to account weather and erosion, it's believed it would be higher than Everest, though in reality it is much lower than that, not even reaching 2500m.
The stop here also afforded a good view of the long road onwards to Uluru, and views over a salt lake to the north, so we all went snap happy with the cameras and took photos of each other.
We headed on to Yulara, the Ayers Rock/Uluru camp site, which we reached at around quart past 1pm, after having travelled 460km and 6 hours. Here, we picked up the last person to join the tour, Shiho from Holland, with Japanese parents. This meant that I was the only male in the group outright, apart from the guide!
We left the trailer at the campsite here, and unloaded the eskis and items in to the fridge, then made our way to the Uluru cultural center. On the way, we stopped at a photo point, where I suggested that now we were all there we should take a group photo, so Vanessa used her camera on a timer to achieve it. Her first comment once the shot was taken was "Guys, sorry to say it but we all look really awkward", which seemed to break the ice further, and we took another group shot which looked much better.
We got to the cultural center just in time to get the informational video about the cultural history and political problems with the area being stolen from the Aboriginals and then turned in to national park and then given back but being kept as national park.
The video made some of us feel a little guilty that we were there as tourists, though it did make us aware that it would be very disrespectful to climb the rock and that since the Aboriginals now look after it, we should heed the signs about where we could and could not take photos.
We went round the rest of the center, and learned the creation dream story for Uluru, involving a Carpet Python and a poison snake getting in a fight.
Terry asked us if we wanted to do the Nala walk, and our question was whether or not, since we were going to be doing the base walk tomorrow, it took in any of the base walk, which Terry confirmed it did, so we opted to skip that today rather than doing the same ground twice.
We headed back to the camp, and discovered that it had rained quite a lot, as there were large puddles everywhere, leaving not much room to camp under the stars. I checked the tent with the bags in it and made sure all the bags were above the water line, and then we all got to work preparing a massive barbeque. Kathrin was the only person with food requirements, being vegetarian, and so she had vegeburgers and salad.
We fairly demolished the food, though there were plenty of left overs, and then we got to work on the dishes, before being told of the plans for the next day which was that we were to get up at 4am to have breakfast and head to the sun rise view point in time for sunrise at 5.40am. After that we were to go on to Kata Tjuta for the valley of the winds walk then come back to camp for lunch before doing the base walk in the afternoon.
Terry wanted to put on a DVD but had upgraded his computer recently and now there was no DVD player available. I ended up being tasked with trying to find a way to get the DVD to play, which took most of the evening, by which time it was too late to play the movie, as we all wanted to get some rest.
Kathrin opted to sleep in the tented area, while the rest of us all had our swags half in and half out of the roofed kitchen area. t was difficult to get to sleep, as the wildlife in the area were making a lot of noise, there seemed to be at least two kinds of frogs, along with the insects chirping and croaking.