A stunning morning viewing of the Olgas as sun came up. A very majestic spiritual place of many colours. Freeeezing, we were there from 6:20, sun up around 7, temp dropped to 2deg ❄️ all very glad we bought thermals coats and beanies. Won’t be needing any of those in a week’s time but that’s irrelevant now! Kids not used to hearing the kaleidoscope of accents encountered when you share a major landmark with international tourists, nb must have a chat about staring and pointing at people.
Thinking of everyone setting up at Fete 2018, hope it’s a success after all that work. Feeling a tad guilty we’re not there,,,, nah just kidding.
Stu’s beanie the first casualty to long drop toilet this morning, he couldn’t do the deed on top, so we had to go back into another toilet!
Matt’s Walking Tours had chosen some moderate tracks for exploring the Olgas, The Valley Of Winds lived up to it’s name followed by a walk into Walda Gorge which was beautiful. The Olgas or Kata Tjuta are incredible, they seem to be made of a different rock to Uluru. I heard it described as ‘pudding stone’ or a kind of conglomerate of other stones all mixed in together, some kind of igneous activity, I’ve been able to clearly articulate to kids these geological processes too - not. Boys most impressed with the survival strategy of recycling urea the kangaroos at Olgas will resort to.
Am loving all the desert plants growing in the orange sand, there is such diversity, so grateful whole National Park is kept so pristine and untouched. There seems to be a lot of recent regrowth, not sure why.
After lunch at campsite we headed in for part two- the 15km cycle around Uluru. I totally loved this, a girly step through bike with flat track, I could have ridden all day gazing at the different shapes and colours of the rock up close.
Cam stacked it fairly early on ending up with handlebars in his stomach, three different versions of how it happened so Matt and Stu led the way after that. Stu was dinked up on back of Matty’s bike which started out very promising but ended up with daddy pedaling for both of them- please see video. We were able to stop and walk into a few waterholes, took us 3 hours all up, v glad we didn’t walk around.
The day ended with some royal wedding streaming to an excited 5/6 of the family with the other portion muttering away to himself about the gender preferences of his sons as he listened to whatever footy was on for the evening. Huge day, King’s Canyon I don’t know if you can top that!!