“Palya” from the Red Centre

Palya means hello/goodbye/thank you/welcome, a very versatile and useful word!

We arrived at Yulara on Wednesday and camped in the Ayers Rock Campground, just one of the many choices of accommodation, all more exclusive than ours! Our neighbours each night have been coach loads of noisy school children, camping in row upon row of small tents. After settling in we walked across the red sand dunes to the resort Town Square, where we saw an old Aboriginal lady sitting in the sand doing a dot painting – no photography allowed! We looked through the resort shops at the very expensive souvenirs, then walked back to the campground via a dune-top lookout for views of Uluru.

On Thursday morning we returned to the resort and watched a performance by the Mani-Mani Indigenous Cultural Theatre, featuring three actors and using sound, lighting and 3D effects to tell the Dreamtime story of Walawaru (eagle), Kakalyalya (cockatoo) and Kaanka (crow). In the afternoon we bought our 3-day National Park pass and visited the Cultural Centre at Uluru before walking about 6km around sections of the rock. We then sat and watched people climbing the rock, but as the day was very overcast there was no point staying for sunset views.

Uluru

On Friday we packed a picnic lunch and drove the 50km to Kata Tjuta. Firstly we took the short walk into cool and shady Walpa Gorge, which was studded with white-trunked gum trees growing around small waterholes. After sharing our lunch with the very insistent little bush flies, we drove on to Valley of the Winds and climbed the rocky pathways as far as Karingana Lookout and back, a fairly difficult 5.4km. We declined to do the full circuit which would have added another 2km, and by the time we’d finished our legs were very glad we’d made that decision! The views were more than worth the effort though, with magnificent towering walls of rock and weather-rounded domes, dotted with cool and shady waterholes along the way. We returned to Uluru in the late afternoon and lined up with hundreds of other to await the stunning colour changes as the sun set on the rock.

Kata Tjuta

Karu Lookout Kata Tjuta

This afternoon we returned for a final visit to Uluru and drove right around the rock, as well as walking another 4km along the base, in total walking about half the 10.6km circumference over the two days. In the late afternoon we returned to the dune-top lookout for our final view of the sun setting over Uluru. Even though this is our second visit to this amazing place, it still gives us an incredible feeling of awe and wonder to be here. I can’t help but wonder what the first Europeans must have thought when they stumbled across it!

Uluru Sunset