A Town Called Alice

The old joke about Alice Springs is that it's a great place to live; whichever direction you go you'll hit a beach. In reality people come to Alice to explore the Red Centre – some just visit Uluru (Ayers Rock) as a very long day trip. Alice does have some very good galleries selling landscape photographs and (some quite expensive) aborigine art. Our main goal in town was to buy decent hats (I didn't manage this) and fly nets.















Originally we'd planed to hire a 4x4 and do the main sites of Uluru, Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) and Kings Canyon independently over a few days. However, we also wanted to bush camp rather that stay at the hugely expensive Yulara (Ayers Rock Resort), and while it's possible to hire swags and cooking gear, in the end we opted from a small group 4x4 tour.














Pick-up was a painful 5:45am, with a breakfast stop at the camel farm on the Stuart Highway, where you can eat a camel while riding a (different) camel – whatever floats your boat. We finished the 440km trip down to Yulara in time for lunch (sandwiches with a free side of flies) before heading off to the first Uluru lookout point.


The local indigenous people, the Anangu, successfully launched a claim to Uluru and Kata Tjuta under the 1985 aboriginal land act, but some back-room deals meant the park was leased back to the federal government on a 99 year term. The main anomaly of this situation is that the Uluru Climb is still open, although the signs (and most tour guides) ask you to respect Anangu law and not climb. As it happens the climb was closed due to extreme heat (temperatures over 36°C, high winds, etc all close the route, to the effect that it is only open 100 days a year), which rendered moot the climb/not climb debate.

One cannot overstate how bad the flies are around here; I tries to resist wearing the fly net, but after the little bastards start trying to drink the water off your eyeballs, it becomes too much. So looking like a party of bee keepers, we started the Uluru base walk. Uluru is a place of great cultural significance to the Anangu, and our guide, Steve, was very knowledgeable about the mythology surrounding the place – well as knowledgeable as you can be for a white fella.


Of course Uluru is famed for the deep red colour it goes when bathed in the glow of sunset, and this is what the tourist hordes come for – some paying vast sums of money to dine on top of a private sand dune, sipping champagne while the flies eat you.














We watched the impressive display, with the 20 coach loads, from the public viewing area, however our champagne had gone AWOL, so I drunk Carlton Drought.


After the sun goes down the flies go to bed, which is a relief. We joined the convoy back to Yulara, to camp in the private camping area – not quite true bush camping tonight, but still sleeping under the stars. Some time after midnight, I was woken by the sound of a camel snoring next to my head, but on closer inspection, it turned out to be the retired headteacher from Yorkshire. This made the 4:30 start all the more painful.















Our sunrise viewing spot lay halfway between Uluru and Kata Tjuta, allowing for the sun to rise behind Uluru (this only happens from this spot of one week a year), while lighting up the larger Kata Tjuta. No sooner was the sun above the rock, than the flies swarmed.

The main track in Kata Tjuta is the 5 mile Valley of the Winds walk, which we started before 8am to avoid the heat. Taking things easy, we stopped regularly as Steve explained the 900,000,000 years worth of geology that gives us Uluru and Kata Tjuta in their current form. At 546m, the largest rock of the Kata Tjuta complex is some 200m higher than Uluru, and with quite a bit of greenery thriving in the micro-climate between the huge rocks, the whole site is more interesting than its more famous sister.














A quick fly infested lunch and we were on the road up to Kings Canyon. On route we stopped to pick up some fire wood and a frozen kangaroo tail from a garage, which was defrosted in the bus. At our campsite the fire was lit, and the hair burned off the tail. This was then buried in the hot ash to cook the traditional way. Kirsten described the taste as a bit gamey. Not wishing to have another camel incident, we took our swags some 50m away from the fire, where we witnessed a rather impressive shooting star.














Another early start for the trip to Kings Canyon and the 4 mile Rim Walk. This area with its plummeting drops, is perhaps the best of the three. For extra value the flies are not nearly as bothersome. Halfway around the walk is the Garden of Eden – a lush valley with a large water hole at the far end. Half an hour of swimming and bombing is a great way of breaking up a long walk.


The return trip to Alice was spiced up by a bumpy ride down the unsurfaced Ernest Giles Road, followed by a live performance by Dinky the singing dingo. Dinky lives with owner Jim at Jim's Place, a roadhouse on the Stuart Highway. He shot to fame a few years ago, with his howling along with the family piano, and has since featured in a documentary presented by Martin Clunes of all people.