Uluru Base Walk

Wednesday, November 9

When the alarm went off at 4:20AM, I though I must be in Hell. My throat was so dry, ugh. I hustled Doug out of his bed and we got ready to meet our group in front of the hotel to start our tour. We were told that it would take about 5 hours to complete the tour, which is basically a 10 km (over 6 miles) walk around the whole base of Uluru. We both took lots of water with us and headed off.

Our tour guide, Scott, was a fun kid who was full of stories about the legends of Uluru and about the desert in general. Doug and I were the youngest people on our tour, but let me tell ya, the oldsters left us in the dust most of the time.

The walk wasn’t very difficult, but it was long and our packs were heavy with all that water. The main reason the walk starts so early is that the temperatures are more manageable at that hour. I was actually a little chilly for the first hour. There was a good wind which kept the flies at bay for a little while.

It was cool to see the Rock from so many different angles and so close-up. From far away, it looks sort of like a pound cake. But up close, you can see all of the crevices and colors and there is an Anangu legend behind every one of them. For example, there might be a crevice that looks like a paw print. According to Annangu lore, it was left by a giant demon dingo that chased the original tribe members from that place.

We started learning about the history of the national park as well. Similar to our Native American population, the Anangu were tossed off the land sometime in the mid-40s and the whole area was turned into a nature reserve. Tourism quickly followed and many of the traditional aboriginal land management techniques were abandoned. As a result, the park became overrun with dead or unusable vegetation and the incidence of wildfires dramatically increased. Meanwhile, the Anangu people were petitioning to get the land back. Finally, in the mid-80s, the “Handback” occurred and now the Anangu people are once again the rightful landowners. They lease the land to the national park, as required in the Handback agreement.

We didn’t see many animals during our walk (we saw a dingo from the bus at about 5:30 AM), but Scott said this wasn’t unusual because the animals tend to stay away from people. We did see lots of birds, though, and Scott was good about pointing out the interesting trees and plants in the area.

We got back to our hotel at about 11. It was rough getting up so early, but I think it was really worth it. Of course, we immediately went back to bed.