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In Alice we took a week off to visit Uluru (Ayers’ Rock) and the nearby Olgas (Kata Tjuta) and Kings Canyon.
No trip to Australia would be complete without a visit to ‘The Rock’. It was too much of a detour on the bikes so we opted to hire a car and have a little luxury for a change. The rock was as we expected it to be – a huge monolith rising out of the desert. The photos don’t really do it justice – what makes it so impressive is the fact that it rises straight out of a huge flat plain which is hard to capture in photos. It was nice to see, but we didn’t enjoy the overly touristy experience of the whole thing.
After the rock we went to the Olgas (Kata Tjuta), another similar sacred aboriginal site, for a 7km circular walk around these huge rock formations. Then onwards to Kings’ Canyon, the Grand Canyon of Australia and an increasingly popular tourist destination. We loved the walk around the rim of the canyon, down into the gorge to a shady pool (alas it was too cold to swim), and then back up to the other side. We actually thought the canyon was a better experience than the rock!
On the way to the canyon, by a bizarre freaky coincidence we came across Lucy and Keiran (who had taken Sedef and the bike to Katherine) broken down in the middle of nowhere… We were able to return their favour and tow them to the next roadhouse!
We are now in the midst of the Australian desert with lovely soft red sand dunes…and feral camels! The sand was so soft and fine it ran like silk through your fingers. If only we had a 4×4 to drive into those lovely dunes…
