Australia, Uluru: Camping and Rare Waterfalls on Sacred Monolith

To visit Uluru and some of the other fantastic sights in central Australia, we booked ourselves onto a 3-day, 2-night camping trip in the outback desert. We thought that would have been the best way to see and experience that part of the country and we weren't disappointed with our decision, even though we were very disappointed with Mother Nature deciding to make the first day we saw Uluru be the coldest day in December history! More on that later, though...

The trip we had booked started in Alice Springs, where we had spent the last couple of days; it finished there, too. In addition to seeing Uluru, we were also going to visit Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon. For the famous Aboriginal sacred site (Uluru), we were going to spend a day and a half in the national park, hiking around the huge monolith, making camp and having some meals with 20 other people and a guide, waking up very early to see the sunrise and exploring the nearby Kata Tjuta. The one thing we didn't end up getting to do was watching the sunset because of a terrible rainstorm we were caught in during our time there.

The views of the valley were absolutely fantastic with water running down the walls of the huge steep domes on either side of us

We left very early from Alice Springs to start our trip. After saying goodbye to Carl, Dan's friend from work who had been travelling in the same area and with us for the past week and a half and was finishing up his tour of Uluru in a little more style than we were since we were roughing it in the desert, we took a cab from Desert Palms Resort in Alice Springs to Alice's Secret Travellers Inn, where we were picked up by our guide in a large bus that would hold 22 backpackers. The woman running Alice's let us eat breakfast there for free even though we hadn't been staying there, which was nice of her.

Our guide with Adventure Tours was named Emma and she arrived promptly at 6:00am to pick us up. There were only a few people on the bus when we boarded and we were excited that our group was so small, but then she stopped at a couple of larger hostels in town and picked up many more passengers, filling the bus completely. Once we had collected everyone and had checked in at the Adventure Tours office in Alice Springs, Emma began the long journey towards to Uluru and the campground in which we were planned to stay for the first night.

Emma had a microphone and the bus had speakers throughout so she kept us informed during the trip of interesting facts about Australia's desert and things we were seeing along the way. The first factoid she gave us was that the bus would be our home away from home, as she would be driving us just over 1000 miles in three days. The driving wasn't too bad because there were rest stops at least every couple of hours; on the first day, we stopped off at a camel farm where we had the option of riding a camel for a small fee, or just relaxing outside a small shop located at the farm.

There were many other animals and birds on display there, too, such as kangaroos, dingoes, more camels, alpacas, galahs and llamas. We didn't ride a camel, since we had done that in Mongolia, but we did enjoy getting close to some of the animals and taking lots of photos of them. The funny thing about that stop was that, even though we had said goodbye to Carl and hadn't expected seeing him again until we met up in Sydney a couple of weeks later, where he was living at the time, we bumped into him at the camel farm!

After half an hour at the camel farm, everyone boarded the bus and Emma continued the long drive to the Uluru campground. On the way, we actually saw a large group of wild camels at the side of the highway. Camels were not native to Australia and were originally brought there to help people who were living in the desert move heavy objects, but they were released by farm owners many years ago when they were no longer needed as roads became drivable by 4WD trucks and other vehicles. What surprised people in Australia was how well the camels were designed for the desert climate; now the camels are flourishing and are somewhat considered a pest, so the numbers are trying to be controlled.

When Emma pulled the bus into the campground, we saw a few areas there with permanent 2-person tents set up in a circular position around a fire pit that had some seats around it. The tents were large and made of thick canvas and had two single beds inside, but nothing else; they were very basic. Next to the tents was a covered dining and cooking area with mesh all around it, in an open-air fashion; it was fortunate for us that the area was covered because of the heavy rains we soon endured, but the inside of the area did get quite wet from strong winds blowing rain inside.

When we arrived at the campsite, Emma split everyone into four groups by giving each backpacker a number. The numbers corresponded to the tasks required to make a meal - chopping food, cooking the food or cleaning up after the meal - and one group of people during each meal was able to relax and chat to try to get know one another. The numbers and assigned tasks rotated during each meal so everyone was able to carry out some form of activity.

Kyle unluckily had a number whose first assignment was cleaning up duties and the last meal we had a couple of days later had the same assignment, so his group had to clean up twice. Dan luckily was assigned the task of relaxing and chatting during the first meal and was able to enjoy the same task during our last meal with the group. For our first meal, lunch, we ate yummy chicken burgers and there was a side of pasta salad served with the burgers.

The food throughout the trip was really tasty and there was always plenty of it, and we were happy from the start with our decision to have booked a camping trip. When we ate our lunch, we were surprised at how cool the weather was that afternoon. Instead of the scorching heat of the desert with temperatures in the 30 degrees Celsius range (around the 90 degrees Fahrenheit range), we found ourselves experiencing a cool and damp day at around 18 degrees Celsius (64 degrees Fahrenheit). We hadn't brought out large backpacks with us and instead only packed our day packs with enough clothes to last three days. This wasn't good for us because we packed to desert conditions and only had shorts and t-shirts to wear. For the first two days of our camping trip, we were freezing cold (and wet)!

After lunch, Emma took us to Uluru, a famous, large sedimentary rock made of arkose sandstone in the middle of the desert. It's thought that the rock extends a few miles below the surface and that the visible section is only a small fraction of the entire monolith. By the time we arrived at Uluru, the rain had started to pour down heavily and we couldn't even see the rock until we were right next to it in one of the car parks. Emma was really excited about the rain because it was extremely rare for people to see Uluru during a rainstorm, and even rarer to see waterfalls cascading off the huge rock.

Instead of walking at that time, Emma drove around Uluru so we could take in its large size and see what it looked like; the inside of the bus had fogged up really badly so we couldn't see it very well, but we did get an idea of what it looked like. We kept opening the windows of the bus to take photos, but the wind and rain were strong and it was hard to get good photos without getting the lens of the digital camera wet. It really was amazing to see silvery streaks of water running down the sides of the rock, which had turned a grey colour when it got wet, much different than its usual striking red colour.

Once the rain eased up a little bit, Emma parked the bus near the beginning of a small trail, Kuniya Walk, which led to a waterhole named Mutitjulu. The name Mutitjulu was given to the waterhole by Aboriginal people and they believed it to be the home of Wanampi, an ancestral water snake. The walk to the waterhole only took ten or fifteen minutes, but it was an impressive sight seeing torrents of water flowing off Uluru and rapidly filling the waterhole. We only stayed there for a few minutes and then headed back to the bus; it started raining really heavily again once we boarded the bus again.

Emma drove us to Kata Tjuta in the pouring rain and she offered the opportunity to do a half an hour hike to see an incredible part of the natural rock formation where two sides converge into a narrow valley called Valley of the Winds. The rain definitely had not receded and, in fact, probably had gotten worse, but we didn't want to miss out on seeing the next amazing sight, so we put on our cheap, thin ponchos (we had bought them in January in Malaysia) and joined Emma and several others for the walk. Before setting out on the trek, Emma had us assemble underneath a covered seating area and she told us how it was thought that the areas of Uluru and Kata Tjuta had formed millions of years ago.

Kata Tjuta used to be named The Olgas and the name of the site had been returned to its original Aboriginal name, which means "many heads"; the area had 36 steep-sided domed rock formations. The name Uluru had also been returned to its area; the monolith has been better known in the past as Ayers Rock, but the Australian government has tried to recognise the Aboriginal sacred site as it should be named. The site of Kata Tjuta lies 20 miles west of Uluru and was also very sacred to Aboriginal people. According to the sacred laws of the Anangu Aborigines, details and stories about the site cannot be revealed to non-Aboriginal people and the area will, therefore, forever remain a secret within their culture.

We thought the rain may slow down whilst Emma told us about the area, but it started raining a little bit harder. Everyone that had said they wanted to do the walk was still ready to explore the area, so we all set off and started getting soaked to the bone during the half an hour it took to walk to the beautiful valley. A few minutes into the walk, when we were making our way along a slippery, uneven rock surface, the wind picked up through the two enormous rocks we were walking between, and so did the rain. Our ponchos were blowing every which way and we started getting really cold besides getting wetter.

During the walk, we observed many small, shallow streams of water quickly flowing across the path we had taken and we had to cross many of the little rivers using slippery stepping stones; there was more than one occasion when we both stepped into the water, completely soaking our hiking shoes. The views of the valley were absolutely fantastic with water running down the walls of the huge steep domes on either side of us. The rocks were immense and provided an awesome sight that we thought was well worth getting soaked for. By the end of the hike, our ponchos had been torn so much by the wind that we had to throw them away; having torn ponchos for the walk back to the bus also meant we got even wetter that afternoon.

That night, our hiking shoes were completely soaked and we spent a lot of time at the campground trying to dry them and our clothes using the hand driers next to the toilets. At first, we had tried to use the washing machine facilities at the campground, but all of the machines except one were out of order, and the one that was working got jammed when Kyle tried to put money into it. After trying to dry our shoes and clothes for half an hour, we gave up and went back to help prepare dinner. That night, we had steaks and sausages cooked on a large grill. The meat was really good and was served with a warm potato salad that was also delicious.

As it got dark, the temperature fell even more and it ended up being very chilly that night. It certainly didn't help that our clothes and shoes were soaking wet. To make matters worse, our sleeping bags were damp because the trailer they had been stored in had leaked a little bit during the heavy rains earlier in the day. It was still raining a little bit that night and anytime we had to walk to the toilet area, our shoes got more soaked and muddy due to a number of pools of water on the path.

We had been given the option of sleeping in a swag, which is a large canvas bag that is used in the outback to sleep in under the stars, but we declined since the ground was so wet and muddy. Since it was still raining, we would have gotten soaked throughout the night anyway; also, with the weather being as cold as it was, the interior of the tent we had chosen was likely to be a little bit warmer.

The next morning, we were woken up early at 4:00am to have breakfast and to see the sunrise at Uluru. When we woke up, it was no longer raining and we were happy for the drier weather, even though our shoes were still wet! The sunrise was absolutely spectacular and we were really impressed with the burning red sky and its changing colours. As the sun rose higher in the sky, the colour of Uluru itself changed quite a bit, too, and we were able to see the striking red of the rock that we had expected to see before the skies clouded over again.

Next on the agenda was the base walk around Uluru, a trek that was almost six miles long and followed the footsteps of ancestral beings that once shaped the landscape; that's at least what the Aborigines believe. Luckily, by the time we started the walk around the base of the giant monolith, it had stopped raining - yes, it had started to rain again when we got back in the bus after watching the sunrise - and we both enjoyed an easy stroll along the dirt path.

In places, though, we did have problems with the trail because it had flooded and we had to jump over large puddles of water, or walk around the edge of them. In the end, our trainers were soaked again and we felt waterlogged once more. The walk around Uluru took us a couple of hours, and just as we arrived back at the bus, the rain started coming down again. That was a good point to get a warm cup of coffee and have a snack inside the Aboriginal Cultural Centre at Uluru.

The Cultural Centre was a good place to find out more about Anangu culture and it provided information on many aspects of the area. We found the centre very interesting and enjoyed our short time there, especially the break from the cold and rainy weather. Once Emma was happy that we had all seen enough there, we made our way back to camp to have lunch. It was Dan's turn to cook and Kyle chopped; they both helped make beef and chicken burritos. After lunch, everyone helped Emma pack up the bus and we headed to the final destination of the camping trip, Kings Canyon.