Uluru rises 348 metres above the surrounding plain. That’s higher than the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Chrysler Building in New York or the Eureka Tower in Melbourne.
– parksaustralia.gov.au
Wow. What an amazing place. An easy drive of about 25 minutes to Melbourne airport, an equally easy to find long stay car park, which I’d booked online the day before and uses your credit card as your entry/exit ticket, a short shuttle bus ride to Terminal 4 for domestic flights and as we only had hand luggage (up to 7kg each) and I’d checked in online earlier, all we had to do was a quick pass through security, scoff down a concourse cappuccino with an egg and bacon roll and a stroll to the departure gate and we were on the Jetstar A320 to Ayers Rock Airport (AYQ) which is only 2 ½ hours away and a ½ hour time difference.
The flights in and out of AYQ are all daytime and give the inbound port side passengers fantastic early views of the monument just before landing. Emma got this shot on our descent. After landing the transit to the airport is quick and easy with the resort only a few km from the airport.
First sighting of Uluru-Kata Tjuta
The development of the current infrastructure centred at Yulara is to support the interest in Uluru-Kata Tjuta from the visiting world whilst also being sympathetic to the wishes of the descendants of the original human discoverers of this location who have held it in the highest regard since the Dreamtime. All current commercial development has been purposely, and relatively recently, built outside of the National Park area and well away from the new township of Mutitjulu (Mutitjulu can be seen to the left on Uluru on Emma’s photo) which is a modern development for the local aboriginal people. The earlier Ayers Rock airport and supporting accommodation and its associated services have all been completely removed.
As soon as we got to the hotel and dropped the bags off we set off to see what we could of the Rock, we found the viewing point between our hotel and the Town Square – cue selfie.
First impressions are so important and ours were fantastic, the heat, the sand, the views, the outback, the potential for an adventure, it was all there so we bagged some bottles of water, got ourselves some bush tucker (crisps, orange juice and granola bars) Not quite GMooH but the thought was there. Got back to our hotel for some hot food and cold beers, booked our breakfast, National Park tickets and return transport and got ourselves an early night ready for tomorrows 08:30 adventure. There was a sunrise and in-depth spiritual option but as that left the hotel at 05:30 we decided there and then that we’re not New Age enough to be doing that shit at that time and we wanted something of a lie in. 08:30 is early enough.
Sandylands to Sandier Lands 