Some disclaimers are necessary when traveling in central Australia: the sun is hot, the roads are rough and flies are everywhere. With this knowledge, the outback becomes slightly less daunting.
In Alice Springs, we traded in our mini-bus for a four-wheel drive jeep, and headed out of town. Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, lay 220 miles south-west over unpaved track. There are easier roads to Uluru, on which endless road-trains of RV’s and rental cars travel during the tourist season. Our route was less direct, meandering by cattle stations, old missions and oil fields. The first stop on the way was Kings Canyon, once an island in a vast Australian inland sea.
By ten in the morning, the temperature at the canyon was nearly 80 degrees and climbing. Hot temperatures summon the local winged wildlife by the thousands. At first, I tried to pretend the flies were like Minnesota mosquitoes. Unfortunately it didn’t work, mosquitoes don’t dive bomb your mouth, eyes and ears at every opportunity.
There are a few options: get used to them, start swatting, or don a flattering green head net. I abandoned pride and embraced the net. Of course, real Aussies scoff at them. In fact, their coexistence with flies is apparently why they mumble—a smaller chance of eating flies.
Camping at Kings Canyon that night, we had out first good look at the southern sky. Cast behind the stars was a hazy, shimmering sheet of light—the Milky Way, only visible like this from the Southern Hemisphere.
We located the Southern Cross, most famously present on the Australian flag, and the constellation by which Aboriginals have navigated for thousands of years. I pointed my camera at the brightest part of the sky and took the longest exposure possible, but ended up only with smallish white dots instead of an undulating night landscape.
The next day, we packed up and started off towards Uluru. Rising out of the landscape, our distance belied its size. But standing several kilometers from its base, it is a giant monolith of red sandstone, presiding over the central Australian desert. To white Australia, it is the symbol of the outback, and a visit to ‘the Rock’ is a mandatory pilgrimage To the Anangu, the custodians of the Uluru, it is central to their dreaming or creation story. Various formations on its face relay their history and lore.
Today, it literally exists in two worlds. Uluru National Park is managed jointly by the Anangu people and the federal parks system. In the 1980s however, the land was returned to the Anangu. At their request, Uluru and the entire park is shut down for ceremonies, funerals and observances.
Sunrise at Uluru is a spiritual experience for some. We arrived at the lookout at 5:30 a.m. and peered out over the desert. From a distance, the rock face began to change colors as the morning sky brightened. When the sun broke across the horizon, the red face of Uluru was revealed, drawing a collective “Ahhh,” from its audience.
We left the Northern Territories the next morning for the hustle and pace of Sydney, bringing to a close two weeks in what was in many ways, a mythic Australia.
