Day 31: 31/1/13
We were up at 4am this morning as we had to leave by 5 to try to make sunrise at Kings Canyon. We were the first bus to arrive at Kings canyon. We had to climb up to the top of it to see the sunrise. There were lots of steps and it took me a while as I was barely awake! There was a girl that asthma struggling beside me! We made it up for the sunrise anyway. Kings canyon is a canyon obviously and a sacred place for the aboriginal people. All the rock is very red and the canyon is deep enough so there's just red cliffs everywhere! It looked cool for sunrise!
After that we walked around the canyon which took about 3 hours. I was so glad that we had gotten up early as by the time we finished at 9am it was starting to get hot! Along the way we saw spinofex- the native grass that's really prickly, gum trees, bonzi trees, streams, water hole, bridges, etc. It is a real canyon in that it was carved out by water. Apparently the Grand Canyon isn't a canyon at all as it wasn't made by water. There's a river there now but it seems that wasn't what made the canyon. It was a nice walk around as it was pretty much all flat! There was a place on the top as well that you could lie down on your tummy and look out over the edge, down into the bottom of the canyon. There was a really good echo there too.
After the walk we got in the bus and had to drive to Uluru. It was about 4 hours of a drive. Half way there we thought we saw Uluru and all took lots of photos- but it was actually a mountain called Mt Conner and not Uluru (Ayer's Rock) at all. It's nicknamed Fooluru. It's pretty flat and looks very like it!
We are staying at Yalara which is the village near Uluru. There are shops and holiday accommodation and things in the centre, but we are about ten minutes out from there. We just have a shed sort of area where theres a table, sink and fridge. Theres a flat bit of ground beside it for us to sleep on in our swags. There are a big block of toilets nearby then as lots of companies have campsites here. When we got to our camp we had time to have lunch and sit at a pool for a little while. The food is all in the trailers in containers with us. There are big cooler boxes for the cold food. We have to chop up the food and make the wraps and stuff and then wash up. We have to make sure the boxes are all packed up before we go anywhere aswell. It was a bit strange at first as we didn't know where anything was or where anything was supposed to go but you get used to it!
Our guide drive us into the village area to see a traditional dance show. It took us a while to find it as we were let off at a building and we thought it was in there and it was actually outside it! There were five men giving the demonstration- 3 white guys and 3 darker guys. All were either aboriginal people or had been adopted into an aboriginal tribe. The aborigines have creation stories for each animal and have dances for every animal. We saw a kangaroo dance, an emu dance, a robin dance and some others. They mimick the animals really and do a lot of jumping around! It looks quite comical. They brought up some guys and girls from the audience too which was funny!
We had free time after that and I read a book for a while. A few of us stayed around the campsite reading and on laptops, others went to the pool. The guide went to the shop later and we snuck along with him to get some icecream!
We went to see Sunset up on a little hill near our camp. There we got our first real glimpse of Uluru. It's bigger than I expected and looks really cool. The sunset was opposite though so we were looking back and forth. The guide used to be a photographer and he likes to use people's cameras for photos. He took mine when I was sitting looking at the sunset and took a photo of me looking out at the sunset. It should have been a nice photo but I had just ja a shower and my hair is all wet- it looks pretty horrible!
For Dinner we had a curry. The guide can cook fairly good meals considering there's barely any equipment! There were figs, beetroot and goji berries in the curry which made it very different!
We sat at the table for a while then looking at people's photos and stuff before getting into our swags again! I picked a place with a good view of the stars, but I was out like a light anyway after being up at 4am!!