A Walk in Kata-Tjuta

After Tennant Creek we drove to Alice Springs, where we spent just one night before moving on to Yulara, near Uluru (aka Ayer’s Rock).  We decided we’d spend time in Alice after we’d visited Uluru. The distances are incredible.  There’s just nothing out here.  See this?  In 124 km we need to turn left onto Uluru Road.  It’s about 450km from Alice to Yulara with only tiny towns and a couple of petrol stations along the way.  With nothing in between. We were keeping an eye out for Uluru.  In the book Are We There Yet? the dad sees Uluru when they are about 35km away.  So we are happily driving along and we see this huge mountain and we’re wondering how we can possibly see Uluru from so far away.  We were still at least 100km away.  As we got closer we could see the shape more distinctly and knew it was not Uluru.  We had a look at the map and eventually there was a sign saying this is Mt Conner.  Locals call it Fool-uru.  Why have we never heard of Mt Conner?  It’s huge.  It’s 300 metres high.  But it’s on private land and you have to book a tour to get close to it.  How come Uluru and Kata Tjuta get all the glory?  There’s one huge campground in Yulara.  It’s also home to several lodges.  There’s no camping in the national park, so Yulara is a busy place.  We stayed four nights since they have a special if you stay that long and the national park pass is good for three days.  Doesn’t that work out just right?  :)  We opted to go to Kata-Tjuta the first day.  If you aren’t from Australia you’ve probably only heard of Uluru/Ayer’s Rock.  Kata Tjuta, also known as the Olgas, is nearby and in the same national park. It’s a series of large boulders which are spectacular, they change shape from every view. There are a few different walks you can do there, we opted to do just the Walpa Gorge Walk. As you can imagine from the name, it’s a walk through a gorge.  Mostly you are walking on solid rock, there are a few bridges along the way. Bridges and steps keep us going with a 2yo.  Look!  Another bridge, hurry! There was a small waterhole along the way that of course we had a hard time keeping the kids away from, they always want to throw rocks in them. It’s hard to grasp in a photograph how very tall these were. There’s not much at the end, you can see where the rocks come together and that’s about it.  The walk goes into the gorge and back out the same trail.  We had a bit of a rest and a snack and headed back the way we’d come. On the way back TurboBug (2) had the GPS and was pretending it was a camera.  We’d have to smile for him while he said ‘Click!’. Some of us thought we’d never make it back. The view looking out from the gorge, it’s all so very flat, isn’t it? The view looking back in.  TurboBug hitched himself a ride. Glad to be done, it was a hot morning.  We didn’t try to do any more that day, we didn’t want to overdue it in the heat.  That night we watched the sunset at Uluru.   This was our only visit to Kata-Tjuta, I would have liked to watch the sunset here but it was a bit of a drive, further than Uluru so we opted to just spend the one day here.  Uluru is where gastro started its run through the family, so we had to take it a bit easy. Look how much it changes from different viewpoints! I must admit that I’d never heard of Kata-Tjuta until sometime after I’d moved to Australia.  This trip has been so good for me in learning my Aussie geography, I hope it’s all sinking in for the kids too.  🙂