The Red Centre

After a night in Sydney and a pleasant meal with my sister's friend who lives there, we flew to Ayers Rock, known to the Aborigine peoples as Uluru. This is more than just one rock: in the middle of the Australian desert - in fact in the middle of Australia - there is the world's largest monolith (Uluru itself) and another outcrop of red rock in the form of 36 domes known as the Olgas or Kata Tjuta, To this has now been added a small tourist resort (four hotels of varying quality and a 'town square' with a few shops and a coupld of cafes) and an airport. As is usual in Australia, these are all quite spread out, so the resort is several kilometres from Uluru and further still from Kata Tjuta. This means that coach trips to the rocks are obligatory, thus making the place a cash cow for the operating company.

We had a trip to Kata Tjuta booked for our first afternoon, so after checking in and having a quick bite to eat (we'd had a minimal snack on the plane) we were off in the coach. We never did get told how these lumps of conglomerate came to be there, nor why they were dome-shaped: but we were able to walk down the Walpa gorge which takes you right in between the domes. I was having a 'good knee day' so I was able to walk almost all the length of the gorge, 25 minutes in and another 25 minutes back out. Then we were taken to a viewing point to see the sun setting on Uluru. We were led to expect changing colours, but in fact this was something of a let down as the colour remained stubbonly red, with just the lighting changing. However, we did get some wine and nibbles to keep us happy. After that we rested back at the ranch and made a light meal in our room: the local restaurants were inevitably expensive, given their captive market.

Next day was the dawn tour: my sister decided not to go because of the flies we'd experienced the day before, so I set off at 5 a.m.to see the sun rise on Uluru and to walk round some of the base. This too was a little disappointing: the sunrise was much the same as the sunset the previous day, and I encountered my first fly as early as 5.35, well before dawn. I spoke to the tour guide about doing an hour's walk in view of my knee, and she said it was 'a little longer' - in fact an hour and three quarters! So I took the alternative of a coach tour round the base, with a short trip to the Mutijula water-hole, an unlikely little lake at the base of the rock (though apparently it can dry up in a really dry season - there had been rainfall the day before we arrived so we were fortunte). Then, after leaving quite a few people to join a party climbing up the rock, we went to the Cultural Centre where it was impressed on us why you shouldn't climb it! Uluru is 'sacred' to the Aboriginal people, though I was told afterwards that they had never had any idea of a God, so the word 'sacred' is perhaps a little inappropriate: 'special' might be better. The Aboriginal law, lore and culture is passed on in an oral tradition known as Tjukurpa. Some of this is kept strictly on gender lines: men are not allowed to know the women's lore, whilst women are not supposed even to look at the places where men's ceremonies take place. Little of the Tjukurpa is revealed to anyone outside the local tribes, let alone white settlers and tourists, so it is hard to understand the mindset of the original guardians of this place, and this may be part of the reason why climbing Uluru has not been banned. I found it hard to have any feel for what moves the Aborigine people: this contrasted strongly to the Maoris in Aotearoa, where I felt quite some affinity for Maori culture and beliefs (especially in looking after the planet).

In the evening, the culmination of our trip was the 'Sounds of Silence' dinner. This began with yet another view of the sunset! but with champagne and canapes. Then a short walk round a concealing dune brought us to our tables for the meal. We sat with some delightful people, some from England and some from Australia, and feasted on a lovely buffet meal with good wine and excellent company. The table had a small light on it, which attracted some fascinating insect life of many kinds! As the sky darkened, a lady astronomer talked us through the night sky of the Southern hemisphere, along with a little of the local mythology. It was an altogether delightful end to our holiday time.