We left Sydney this morning and flew about 3 1/2 hours northwest to Ayers Rock, in the middle of the "Red Center" and about 1,000 miles from anywhere. We're staying at the Ayers Rock Resort in the town of Yulara, Northwest Territory and just about in the middle of the Outback. Of course, the Resort is the town, or if it's not, they sure hid the town pretty well. We rented a car again because we plan to drive to King's Canyon, about 200 miles east of here on Sunday, and then on to Alice Springs on Monday.
We arrived around 12:30 local time (1.5 hours behind Sydney), found the resort (wasn't too hard), and then drove out to Ayers Rock to take some pictures. The rock is really something. Red sandstone that just sits out in the middle of the desert and probably has 300 feet of exposed surface, with the remainder of its 1100 feet of height being underground. It's about 6 miles in circumference, probably 2.5 miles long and a mile or so wide. There are lots of fissures, landslides, caverns, and what appear to be empty pockets scattered around the formation, making it that much more interesting.
Unfortunately, we don't have enough bandwidth here to upload any pictures, so that'll probably have to wait until we get to Cairns later next week.
Tomorrow morning (4:30 am!) we're taking a camel ride out towards the Rock to see Ululu in the sunrise. Sounds like fun. And, tomorrow evening, we have dinner out at the rock to see the sunset. After that, we've pretty much covered all there is to see and do here.
The resort is actually very nice, particularly since it's literally out in the middle of nowhere. We're staying in the Desert Gardens Hotel, one of three onsite. In addition, there is a campground available for the more hearty. There are half a dozen restaurants, as well as a little shopping area, so about all the amenities of life are all here. Not much vegetation, though, and we haven't seen any animals except for black flies. Turns out the had the first rainfall in some time (years, maybe?) a couple weeks ago, and the insect population has exploded.
Anyway, tomorrow promises to be another interesting day. More later!!
Well, we finally got sufficient bandwidth (now in Cairns) to upload pictures, so here are a few from around Ayers Rock:
Pat's Paragraph... I had been thinking that with all this red dirt and dust that the iron reading must be through the roof. I also thought that maybe that was why there were so many holes in Ayers Rock, there were miners chopping it up for iron ore. No and No. I hate to inform you But that huge rock, Uluru, in the native language, and the Olgas, Kata Tjuta in the native language, are not red. I know, you're thinking, "Girl, are you blind? That's the biggest red rock, and bunch of red rocks, ever!" As they say here, "Neyh". The rocks are made of sandstone, layers of sand that laid at the bottom of a shallow sea a kabillion years ago. It comes in 2 colors, white and yellow. All of these rocks are the white sandstone. There are teensy tiny microorganisms that love the rocks and adhere to it. It feeds and thrives on the iron oxide dust that blows around and has a sticky goo that catches the dust. Also there are different lichens that stick to the rock that make it look white in places and also black, like stripes. That specific lichen that shows black is a kind that likes water so it's found in ridges and dips where more water would gather or pass. Again, you wonder, what water? We met a health care worker that has worked in the area, about 200 kms away, for over 11 years, off and on. She has talked to older teenagers, Aborigine teens, that have never seen rain in their lifetime. Amazing. I learn something new every day. And my white sneakers are pink from the red dust.
Here you can see that there are a lot of eroded areas of the rock, and inside the rock above the landslide the rock itself is pockmarked with what look like small caves extending vertically:
The red color of the rock is NOT iron oxide, it's actually lichen that is growing on the bright white rock underneath. Here we had what we originally thought must have been a trail going up the rock, but on closer examination, it is a darker form of lichen that has grown where water runs off the rock (when it rains?):
This is the "back side" of the rock, which is considerably more eroded and less smooth in appearance:
And a little further along the back side of the rock:
