Day 135 | Yulara Campground: time for a break

rest day

I was treated to one of my great bike rides late yesterday afternoon.

Finally on the best road surfaces I’ve travelled in weeks, decent tailwind and mostly downhill as I zoomed along at 28+ km/h through the sand dunes and desert oaks.

At first just a glimpse of Uluru in the distance, then some big views, rain apparent, heading that way, the famous colour change working its wonders. I haven’t had that before, for so long, it’s 42 km across to meet the main Uluru road, a full two hours of changing shades as I snuck closer to The Rock.

Having just dropped in from Mt Augustus, a twice as big splendiforous lump of stone, I can say that Uluru trumps it bigtime. The rock faces are shear at the bottom, vegetation insignificant, it’s like a button plonked on a table, whereas Mt Augustus, well, frankly it’s another hill whatever the claims made.

The obvious difference is the number of punters, in WA you could easily avoid them, here there’s more fully loaded buses than cars, it’s a cast of 1000s. It’s tourism of the international variety, most common language heard: German.

I’ve been around here in the past, twice. Twice walked around the 9 km base walk, twice ascended the surprisingly difficult path, climb, to the summit.

Visitors these days are requested to not climb by the Aboriginal custodians and I’ve already decided I’m going to accede to their request, there’s a lot of powerful stories of spirits tied up in this place.

In fact I’m going to be hanging around here for a few days and I’ve already been as close as I need venture.

Maybe I’ll climb back up that sand dune tonight and watch one of those famous sunsets from afar.