Ayres Rock

Hallo again,
After a few days at Kings Canyon National Park we travelled the Lasseter Highway southwards to Ayres Rock. The first part of the trip down was through some very attractive desert oak forests that grew in between the taller red sand dunes. Although the vegetation is still open scrubland the scenery was very pleasant.
Mt Connor came into view first which stood out as a table top mountain in the distance.  It is commonly mistaken by first time travellers as the ROCK. .....but no.
We freedom camped about 25 kms from the park boundary at one of the many roadside areas that are relatively common in this part of the world. Most sites are neat and tidy but could do with more toilets!
The following morning we travelled another 25 km down the road until Uluru came into view and was unmistakable, distinctive and iconicly Australian.
We called into the town of Yulara which was built in 1988 to service the expected tourism boom following the return of the land to the original aboriginal people. The town was well laid out with accomodation, post office, grocery store, bookings office and hotels.
The park entry fee was 25 dollars each for three days which is something unusual for us kiwis having to pay to get into a national park and world heritage area. We first called into the park visit centre which had an overwhelmingly strong cultural element to it.  There was very little about the parks natural values or management issues facing park manager! (sad.)
Our first job was to get a feel for the place and go for a walk.  We parked at the Marla carpark only to find the climb up the rock was closed due to high winds.  We discovered there was a shared walking/bike track around the base of the rock so I grabbed the MTB and set off on the 10 km circuit with camera in hand. The sandstone rock is very steep and massive and the ride around was great. The aboriginal people have lots is sites where taking pics or video is not allowed which had to be respected.
We planned to go to the Olgas mountains the following day so we went back to our free camp site for another night. We made an early start and drove the 40 kms to the large rock formations that were lit up with the morning sun in an impressive and dominant fashion.
The day was very hot at 35 degrees so we limited walks to ones where there was water and shade. The rocks were a very coarse conglomerate rock unlike Ayres Rock which is a finer sandstone. Also some of the granite rock in the parent material had been ground down by glaciers millions of years ago when Gondwanaland was much closer to the south pole.!!!!
That evening we cruised back towards Ayres Rock with the sun behind us once more.We parked up with about 300 other visitors to watch the sunset over Ayres Rock. It's one of those things people need to do once in their lives as its is a marvelous spectacle of changing light and colour.
We cruised out of the park once again to our free campsite and said our goodbyes to this special place.
Cheers for now
Rudy and Maria.