Second day on a expedition tour. Today we are gonna enjoy the Kata Tjuta and Uluru sunrise. Then we will do a 3 hours walk in the Kata Tjuta, the “valley of winds”. Finally we will drive towards Watarrka (Kings Canyon) and reach the campsite for the night. This is a full day :-) Follow the guide! (not me).
6:00am, we hit the road again.
30 minutes later we arrive to the lookout. The sun is still under the horizon :-)
Uluru stands out very easily on this flat land.
uluru!
Everyone is waiting, patiently, enjoying the atmosphere warming up.
Taja Tjuta is on our left side, still in the darkness.
We keep looking between the two piece of rock.
The colours in the sky are bright (are maybe I’ve been cheated with my camera).
Taka Tjuta plus Uluru.
The sun is coming!
And let the colours showing up.
Uluru.
This is actually quite cold now. Maybe around 10 degrees.
Taka Tjuta.
just different shot style.
Taka Tujta has 36 domes but some of them are not accessible for the tourism industry.
The Tali (Sand dune) beneath this platform is characteristic of this place. The large variety and number of plants that you see growing here help stabilise the dune. Traditionally they also provided valuable resources for collecting and processing them. This helps to keep our culture and knowledge of the land alice.
uluru again :-)
Wow!
More and more people are coming to enjoy this wonderful sunrise.
Taka Tjuta :-)
Close up view.
So bright!
Sunrise video!
Bez, the guy said: “When the sun is up, everyone come back to the bus”. So, this is the time.
Actually, the lookout is good but the rest as well.
I think it’s even better from here.
pk, let’s go back.
bye Uluru.
Grass view.
we are know front of Kata Tjuta, ready for a 3 hours walk.
Everyone has a bottle of water so we can start.
The path start easy but there is more climb coming.
Like Uluru, this place is really impressive.
The texture is more rough than Uluru’s.
Bez explains how those places has been here since million of years. The sea used to cover most of Australia a looong time ago. The “rocks” appear because of the tectonics plates that move continuously. Plus, Uluru used to be 90 degrees inclined compare to now until the whole thing pivoted to reach its actually position. That explains why the strats are vertical and non horizontal like any other mountains.
This is full of red, blue and green.
Wide view.
Super wide view.
We are doing the full circuit walk of 4.1km.
Bark sample.
I wish I would know the name of all those plants.
But I don’t.
Let’s go to the lookout.
The track is really rocky.
This is the kind of texture we can find around this area.
Asians doing pictures each ten metres :-)
This is a bit of a climb :-)
Coming up!
We are getting close to the lookout.
Few more “steps”.
Few! This is nice :-)
This is a fig tree. Aboriginals use them a lot but they never take every fruits at once. They leave some for other communities. Mainly they think always for long term as they never know if the next time there will be that much fruit.
Close up view to young leaf.
We are now going down in the “Valley of winds”.
These are call “Cairn” as Cairns in Queensland. I thought they were used to indicate a direction in remote areas but Bez has another explication. Years ago, when a farm needed some workers, they piled up some stones like this on the front of their property. That way, people knew that they could get some work :-) Useful!
This tree is used by Aboriginal to find very good resource of protein. In fact, they look for a dry, dead branch at the bottom of the tree. They are looking for a ‘Maku’ (Witchetty Grubs) which lives in the branch (video down there).
Close up view.
Witchetty Grubs and Honey ants.
Going down in the Valley of the winds.
Super wide view.
We’ve done more than the half of the walk now.
Back to the carpark for a last glance at Taka Tjuta.
Back on the road towards Kings Canyon! About 4 hours away.
Bye Uluru, it was a pleasure :-)
Everyone was half asleep in the bus when Bez, our guide, woke us up.
Nearly 20 camels were going to cross the road when we arrived.
They are a bit confused because of us. The big male is guiding the troop of female and young camel. Finally, they all run back from where they were coming from.
We took the opportunity to stop the get some more wood for tonight.
Everyone is participating.
Those trees are so dry that you can take a whole tree sometimes. Let’s load all of that!
Next stop is Curtin Springs.
There is Mount Conner in the background.
Bez told us that it’s the last place where we can get alcohol until Alice Springs so I can see many backpackers coming out of the shop with beers…
Nice spot but very expensive!
Funny sign.
As I said, this place is very expensive so if I had to cycle here one day, I would make sure I’ve got everything I need with me.
You can even buy shit here! Note: Guarranteed 100% Political Bull Shit Free.
Back on a road we just stopped again to have a look to a salt lake.
And here it is! I love the color of the sand better than the salt lake actually.
This is where we are coming from.
Mount Conner again.
Later on, we finally reached the campsite. Everyone is a bit dizzy after all those hours in the bus.
This is where I’m going to sleep tonight.
And this is where most of us will sleep tonight. Yesterday, when Bez show us how to use a swag, everyone was a bit scared I guess. They all sleep next to each other, threatened by the surrounding, haha. Nothing happened of course but when you or not used to sleep outside it’s a bit scary the first time :-)
We are finally four who want to sleep under the stars. Crazy that it’s the best place to do this and everyone prefer to sleep in a “box”…
The fire is burning :-)
Bez show us how to make a “Damper Bread”. Basically we used :
- flour
- bear (alternatively limonade)
- garlic paste (alt raisin)
- Herbes (choc)
- cheese
- salt
We mixed roughly every thing together and put that in that pot (above in the picture). We could even put the bread directly under the ashes for a real Ozi experience but Bez used the “soft” technic ;-)
Now it’s cooking time.
The table is ready!
This is kangaroo meat.
20min later the bread is now ready. We can enjoy dinner together :-) Good night!
I love the photos, especially the sunrise of the Taka Tjuta. very pretty colors with the bush and the soil and everything.
The blue skies are beautiful in the photos!
The dinner looks yummy.
Very nice to travel again :-) aha! = just setting in my couch, I see all these beautiful and amazing places, sleeping under the STAR at night, Priceless. Awesome Damien!
Fantastic photos Damien. Brought back lots of good memories for me. So glad that you have been able to do this tour.
Hello Damien ! Fantastiques visites, fantastiques photos ! Tout à l’air parfait ! Les images, les repas, le coucher sous les étoiles ! As tu vu des étoiles filantes, et fais un voeu ?? Ce n’est pas la saison je crois ! Gros bisous, merci pour ce partage.