Sunday, April 7, 2025

For years, I’ve been fascinated with Ayers Rock, located in the Northern Territory of Australia, right smack in the middle of this huge country.

What I didn’t know was that it was renamed in 1993 to Uluru to honor its traditional aboriginal name.  And the biggest shock is that it is 550 million years old!!!!  Wait …. and the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago???? (thanks, Marty)

It took us about 3 hours to fly  here, which is why we left our Cairns Hotel at 5:15 am.  And what a thrill it was to see it for the first time from the plane!

We were taken directly on a tour of the national park by a very knowledgeable guide.  We walked next to it and drove all the way around it. 

The Anangu people have lived here for 35,000 years.  Unfortunately, tourists started to climb it in 1963 (called The Chicken Crawl because some people would chicken out when attempting to climb by hanging onto a low rope).  38 people died in the process.  Climbing was banned in 2019 as it should be.  This is an incredibly sacred place to the indigenous, and there are parts of the monolith that are now completely off limits, even to photography. 

The one drawback to visiting were the FLIES.  TONS OF THEM.  They are only around in the summer, so I just can’t imagine being here when it’s super hot.  It was only 89⁰ yesterday!

There are no animals in the vicinity due to the original airport and resort being right next to the monolith.  This, along with all the  careless climbers, the water table became polluted.  Sad. 

The tour ended around 1pm, and we were on our own for lunch, shopping, and a little R&R. 

At sunset time, we traveled out to a viewing spot to watch the monolith change colors.  Quite the thing to do ….

I took several shots as the lighting changed.  It felt a lot like watching Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon change colors ….

A BBQ dinner was presented under the night sky.  We even got to taste kangaroo…

After dinner, they shut off all the lights, and we were given a tour of the night sky.  How weird to see Orion facing a different direction!  And, of course, I was once again happy to see The Southern Cross.

We crashed pretty hard last night.  For me, experiencing this day was a Bucket List item now checked off.

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