Drive to Yalara & Uluru – Anangu land

Each morning when we are set to leave we discuss the plan for the days driving. I usually like taking the morning drive as I seem to get tired in the afternoon when it comes to driving – we agree that we will stop every 2-3hrs and decide on the place for the night. Our end destination was Uluru, that’s about 700km – wow, that’s a lot of driving and we planned for two days of travel. I had an Australian College of Midwives (ACM) Special General Meeting that I wanted to attend via zoom, so we had to choose a place to stop that had internet coverage at 12noon SA time, this happened to be Marla 228km, which we could do easily and then we would free camp between Erldunda and Curtin Springs – plan set lets go.

The weather has been brilliant, a bit cold at night but great during the day – we are getting slick at packing up the van and heading out, although we find it hard to start sometimes in the morning, we’ve yet to have an early start, I guess that’s the beauty of travelling in your own time.

I was excited to share the Uluru experience with Ian, he had never travelled inland and I thought it would be good for him to see the big red rock. I had last been to Uluru and Alice Springs with the ACM in 2010 and I was keen to see what changes had occurred.

Ready, set go – we made Marla in great time for the meeting, had some lunch and then set off again. One of my slight bug bears with Ian is that he likes to do all the driving and usually likes to push the limit to reach the destination, even though we have agreed on a plan. He just likes to drive…….

We hit the Stuart Hwy – it was kilometres of spinifex, low lying shrubs, or no shrubs, some beautiful yellow flowering natives and lots of roadkill, kangaroos. We finally hit Kulgera Hotel Northern Territory (NT) just across the border from SA– it was a great stop, our first encounter with the annoying flies – the pub had lots of character, great toilets and the inside of the pub was covered in bras and underwear, Ian was in 7^th heaven. Ian had a beer and we chatted to other travellers.

The drive was long, there were some interesting spring flowers appearing, getting Ian to stop for photos was a nightmare – so I got better at taking photos out of my window. We had driven past our agreed 4hours now we reached Erldunda Roadhouse about 4pm, refuelled, toilet break, I took some more pictures and rightly or wrongly we decided to continue down the road until we found a roadside parking stopover.

I was starting to worry as the sun was setting and we still had not found a rest place, so I said to Ian we will just have to pull over and rest anywhere that it looks ok – he was not keen on that idea, anyway we finally found a place that was acceptable. I went for a walk to look at where we were staying, I must have walked at least 2 km because when I got back Ian was worried as to where I had gone. He was unhappy about our location he could see the road and that cars could see us, so I relented and said ok, but if we don’t find one soon, we will have to pull over because it’s too far to drive in the dark – I silently prayed that we would find a dedicated parking rest place. Thankfully we only had to travel another 15mins when we found a rest place, with several other campers – Halleluiah, we were both happy. We had dinner and played a game of Qwirkle as I was so stressed it was the only way to calm me down – at least so I told Ian so he would play – it’s a great game and we both do love it – Ian won by 1 point.

Next morning – alas we had another flat battery. This time we had googled how to use the new beaut car battery charger, so I was not particularly worried – we tried it, alas it just did not have enough grunt to start the car. One of the other campers was walking his dog and came over to see if we needed a hand – we asked could he give us a jump start, he said he didn’t have jumper leads, no worries I said – we have a brand-new set. He came back with his mate who had a bigger new beaut startup machine for flat batteries – the three men stood looking and chatting about how it was best to attach this battery charger, finally they attached it – but it did not work, they had no answers as to why it didn’t work and we resorted to the tired and tested jumper leads- yeah the car started – thankfully it was not as flat as the first time this happened the car went into normal mode – all was good. I have to say that caravanning people seem to be very helpful and eventually someone will come to help you.

We don’t know what drains the car battery, but what we have learned now is to disconnect the power lead from the caravan when we are staying in free parking and we have not had another flat battery.

Now we were only about 120km from Uluru, I was getting excited –as you are driving along the Lasseter highway, in the distance you can see a huge red rock, you think you’ve made it hoorah! but this is Mt Connor NT often first confused with the Big Rock as it juts high above the flat desert plains, this is what you are expecting to see. There is a lookout for you to stop and take pictures of the beautiful Mt Connor – it noticeably has a flat top which makes it noticeably different to Uluru which is rounded. Mt Connor is on private property, you can buy tickets to tour Mt Connor from the Curtin Springs Station, we decided that viewing from the lookout was sufficient for us.

It is hard to describe the sheer joy as you drive around a bend and look up and you see this magnificent bright red rock against a bright clear blue sky – it’s just the town where you book in for Uluru (Ayers Rock) is called Yalara, there is the Ayers Rock Resort complex, hotels, shopping precinct and a few restaurants. We stayed at the Ayers Rock campgrounds. I booked us in to the campground for a powered site to my surprise it was $90.00 per night ($45p/p), that’s double of what we have paid anywhere else. I booked for two nights. We unhitched the van and went for a drive straight to the rock – You have to download the National Park passes at $37.00 each for a three-day pass, at least it was for three days. We navigated the caravan parking bay, unhitched and went straight to see Uluru, which is another 24.9km via Uluru Rd. My aim was for us to see both a sunset and sunrise of Uluru.

Uluru did not disappoint us, it truly is magnificent, there is something really special about this great rock, it’s such a natural beauty. What was different for me this trip as you walked around was the clear signage of the storytelling to understand the culture and story of this Aboriginal land and its people. The first afternoon I did the Mala walk to Kantja Gorge, it was an easy 2km return walk – it was a beautiful peaceful walk – Ian did a small section, and his feet began to hurt so he went a sat in the car. The weather was perfect, not too hot a nice 28 degrees and blue skies, not a single cloud.

Uluru has dedicated viewing sites for sunset and sunrise viewing – we went to see the sunset and Ian was surprised how full the carpark was. It was to capacity and the sunset was spectacular – the sunrise was predicated to be at 0705 – Ian stayed in bed, and I went, but I was a tad late, I left at 0620 but as I arrived, I could see the sun rising – still it was beautiful and I then went for a lovely walk, so peaceful and special. I got back and we had breakfast and we decided that we would do the base of Uluru but not walking as Ian’s feet would not be able to manage, so we used our bike and scooter – great decision Pauline!!! If I say so myself. It was the best fun – 10.6km and again so spectacular to be so close and in awe of this magnificent wonder of nature – it was on this ride that I spotted wild budgies, never seen them before, they are brighter and smaller than our tamed budgies – so delightful to watch, we spent ages watching them in their nesting tree.

We then went to see the Olgas Kata Tjuta meaning ‘many heads’ in Pitjantjatjara, one of the several local languages used in the Park. The Olgas is made up of 36 domes spread over 20 sq/km. We stopped at a shelter, and I went for a walk – it was a grade 3 walk and I managed about ¾ of the walk before I turned back as it was too hot and I was getting tired – so back to the car I went.