The rock at the centre of Australia
This one is on a lot of bucket lists, including ours…Uluru!
After our stay at Curtain Springs just one hour away, we made it to Yulara quite early. Yulara is basically Ayres Rock Resort, a town consisting of three different resorts (all at different price points) and the campground. There’s a collection of shops, a medical centre and police station and that’s about it. It’s a happening place though with tourists everywhere – easily the busiest place we’ve been for a number of weeks.
After a look around the shops and morning tea in the Town Square, we checked in early to the caravan park. Because we had no choice about the site we chose (hard enough to get the one we got), we ended up with a powered site, which is always quite nice as it means we get to run the heater, and Jim doesn’t have to worry about solar panels.
The campground is enormous. Easily 500+ sites and it is packed every single night. There’s a lot of movement going on as people are coming and going to see the sunrise or sunset or do various tours. Our plan was to get out to Uluru and to Kata Tjuta (The Olgas), both of which were going to be a day each. There’s always the added complication of the dog, but luckily the workers of Yulara are on to that and there were plenty offering their services as dog sitters on their day off, to earn a bit of cash in hand.
We found a couple of nice guys to look after Jett – Sulan for the first day and Jake for the second. Not cheap at $100 a pop (most we’ve paid previously is about $35 I think) but well worth it to be able to maximise our time here and get out to see these iconic sites as a family.
We went out to Uluru first and did the walk around the base, which with all the little side bits is around 12km. We were out there early (8:30am) to make the most of it, and we’re glad we were because as it gets hotter the flies tag along. We’ve all seen Uluru in pictures and on TV but to see it up close is really quite something. It’s very impressive, with a surprising amount to see, with a couple of watering holes at the base and some interesting caves. After lunch we drove out to one of the viewing points for a different perspective, and then to the sunset viewing point on the way out, which I think is the iconic view that we see most often in the postcards.
The next day Jett went off to Jake’s house and we went out to Kata Tjuta. Combined, these are bigger than Uluru and if I had to pick the more interesting of the two I’d probably choose Kata Tjuta. We did a loop walk which went up and over a bit of it, then down into a really impressive valley before walking out again. We had lunch out there then did a shorter gorge walk which was just as impressive. There were some challenging sections to the walks (grade 4) which all up were about 10km. The kids did well to back up after the day before and knock off around 22km in two days.
As we had a bit of time to kill before we picked up Jett we popped into one of the resorts for a drink. There are loads of nice looking restaurants in the resorts which we’ll have to save for next time (when we come without the kids or dog!).
Just outside Yulara is one of Australia’s largest camel farms. I’m not a huge fan of camels (I encountered a rather angry one when I went to Syria many years ago), but I took the kids anyway and encouraged them to have a ride. They do offer tours where you go off for an hour or two, but 10 minutes is about the attention span of the kids so we did the quick loop around camel farm yards where they learned a bit about their camels (Olly for Heidi and Wally for Hamish) and had a little ride around.
Being under the umbrella of all the resorts, the campground dwellers could also partake in a range of free activities held each day. Later that day I took the kids to a show about the Cosmos (the star gazing out here is pretty phenomenal), and then to a free movie. On another day Jim took them to a painting session where they learned how to paint Australian animals using the dot painting technique and Heidi and I went to a session about bush tucker which was really interesting.
Other than that, we visited the various lookouts at different times of day to see sunrise and sunset views of Uluru and the kids spent a fair bit of time making friends, and running into friends they’d met at Coober Pedy (which ended up being quite a lot of kids). Somehow, despite there being around 500 sites, we ended up right next to one of the little kids that they’d been playing with in Coober Pedy so we got to know her parents a bit, and will catch up with them all in the next stop too (King’s Canyon).
It’s been really quite an experience to come here. You never know whether the reality will live up to the hype when you come to a place that you’ve heard or seen so much about in the media and in books etc. But both Uluru and Kata Tjuta are quite special spots, and it was all very convenient staying in Yulara which is only about 15 minutes from the entrance to the national park. We’ve heard good things about King’s Canyon too, so we’re looking forward to hopping in the car for the three hour drive out there.
