Where are you? Uluru

Flying out of Perth was good for a few reasons. Mainly because you get to see the baron outback of Australia almost totally uninterrupted by cloud. It's a red and desolate land with some amazing looking rifts and ridges with the odd tiny tiny town every now and then. Quite why we had to watch the life jacket demonstration on the way out I'll never know, unless the plane crashed in a creek but even then. This area is sometimes called the red centre and it's not difficult to see why. It's red. But not totally baron, trees do exist in abundance out here. They mainly look like they're dying but they're not. Uluru is the Aboriginal, and original, name for Ayers Rock. It was reverted back a few years ago when the Australian government granted the land back to the Aboriginal people. It's now loaned out from them to the government for a 99 year period. What happens then is anybodies guess. The Olgas, now renamed Katajuta, are also nearby. They're a collection of round rocks jutting from the flat landscape that also look pretty decent from the plane on the way in to land.
We got off the plane into the baron desert and it was raining. Not hard but still. We'd manage to forget where we'd booked to stop which is a bit of a mistake here. The only area the public can stop is some 20kms or so out of the national park in which Uluru lies. This area is called Yulara and is all owned by one company, meaning high prices but at least a decent set up. A free bus picks everyone up from the tiny airport and drops people off all the accommodation within Yulara. The accommodation varies from flash hotels to dorm rooms to campgrounds for tents. Guess which one we stayed in? The tents of course! And they weren't cheap. Ready erected and with proper beds but freezing at night. The warning signs for dingoes were disheartening too! At least there's a supermarket and bar/restaurant here so we can at least try and keep the spending budget down.
There are various lookout points around the resort, these are just large mounds of earth with boardwalks on but the views are great. After a beer at the bar we went up to have a look at Uluru at sunset. It was a real good atmosphere up there and the rock definitely has something special about it, it looks great. But we are still a fair way from it. The next day we get up around 5 to see the sunrise next to the rock. This was pretty damn cool. Up close in the dark the rock is menacing. A huge black monolith in the immense flat land of the dessert. Once the light appears and the sun starts hitting it all manner of colour changes affect the pitted surface. The sky was the clearest blue I'd ever seen and the rock has a kind of special look about it. It has to be one of the must see things in the entire world and I'm not completely sure why. It's an icon of Australia and for the aboriginals it's intensely sacred. That's why there are signs everywhere asking you not to climb it. You still can of course but we didn't. For one it's really steep, for two I wasn't that bothered. The best views are of the rock, not from looking from the rock. There's not much else out there! We took the 9 and a half km walk round instead and this took around 3 hours. Up close it looks nothing like we'd seen in the photos. They can't do it justice. The many different angles, holes, water pitted craters and canyons, huge rock falls, the shadows it's casts on itself, aboriginal art(although not great), the odd wave like curves and the little trees scrambling for life in cracks make it all worth seeing up close. Apparently it's a sight after heavy rain when water runs off it for days after. I'm glad it wasn't raining that day.
Afterwards we looked round the mainly dour cultural centre before heading back to the resort. At night we drank Aussie beer with an English we'd met and chatted to a couple of Aussies over an Outback Burger. This consisted of beef burger, bacon, fried egg, pineapple, cheese and beetroot. Tasted bloomin marvelous. Live music blared out, 'Tie my kangaroo down sport', 'A land down under', 'Waltzing Matilda' and so on. Good stuff though and the old guy playing guitar pulled out a Joe Satriani(mental fast electric guitar player) tune with ease. Cracking. A Spanish couple filled us in a little on South America and it all made for a great night.
Getting to our next destination wasn't so easy. We ended up getting on a tour bus just as transit passengers, meaning we had to get on the bus when the tour was heading back to Alice Springs after sunset at Uluru. We had a day to lounge about and wait for the bus. The heat during the day is intense but thankfully the bar was shaded!
We flew out from Alice Springs in a few days so needed to get there and have a quick nosey round. The bus turned up and we prepared for the 6 hour, 400km ride. In darkness. And outback it's dark. You can see stars right down to street level. We were told not to panic if we hit a Kangaroo or Emu, and besides, the bus had good breaks. A demonstration wasn't necessary at 80km/h but they gave one anyway.
I saw a lonely fire along the way that was covered up as we passed, people actually camp out here! Between Uluru and Alice there's nothing except one roadhouse, where we stopped off for a quick ale. I desolate to say the least. Getting in to Alice Springs at midnight without accommodation could be a problem though. Even the roadhouse phone was on the blink so I couldn't ring ahead. It'll be interesting I'm sure.