TRAVELS IN THE TAJ: Choppers over the Magic Mountains

Uluru is a mystical place. It’s a place that you want to keep looking at and every corner has another story and another aspect to its character. Its shades of grey, mauve, salmon, pink and purple keep you attuned to it and wanting more photographs. It is definitely a sacred place.

After making our home at the Ayers Rock Campground and once again, no shade for the caravan, we unpacked ready for adventures. Day One was investigating The Rock. We visited the Uluru-Kata Tjuta Cultural Centre and hired two bicycles to scoot around Uluru. We have the bikes for 3 hours – plenty of time you say. Wrong! It is a place of wonder and you want to stop to take another photo at each turn. We reached the halfway mark at a beautiful waterhole and Nigel was starting to feel the heat and decided to turn around and head back. I decided to go “hell for leather” and raced around the last part, grinning wildly, and enjoying the speed and thinking, “not bad for an old girl of 60!” It was a cracker of a ride and I made it back with 10 mins to spare – hand pumping the air – Viv wins the Tour de Uluru!!

The next day was a chopper ride over Uluru and Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) which was spectacular and shows these two mountains in stark red contrast to the surrounding flat land. Make no mistake, they may call this the Outback, but it is lush and fertile with abundant trees, plants and wildlife. Just stunning. From the air, we could see the old sand dunes, line after line of them, and they date back 30,000 years. Sheesh! Just a drop in the ocean of time!

The next day we headed to Kata Tjuta by car and spent the morning walking through the Walpa Gorge, which was searing hot walking over the rocks until you enter the Gorge and then it was cool, shady and with waterholes. Pure bliss. We could not do the Valley of the Winds walk as it was too windy and the track was closed. Obviously, a little dangerous! In the afternoon, we had our camel ride to watch the sunset over Uluru and I had great joy in seeing Nigel snotted by my camel – all over his shirt amid squeals of disgust from N and peels of laughter from Moi!

In the evening, we enjoyed a degustation dinner in the desert called Sounds of Silence. It was a full gourmet meal with wine, aboriginal dancing and an astronomer giving a light hearted lecture on the stars and planets in the sky above us and a look at Saturn and Mars in the telescopes on site. We also both celebrated our 60^th birthdays and much to our delight,were given yummy chocolates and an iced plate reading happy birthday and the ubiquitous “happy birthday” rendition from the other diners. Very fun!