Northern Territory, Uluru to Devil's Marbles

johnhennessy73
Jul 28, 2022
4 min read

Hi everyone, sorry it's been so long since I last did a blog, my mum and dad gave me the school holidays off, and we went to Tasmania for Christmas and New Year, then back to Melbourne for the Australian Open. After the tennis we flew back to Ireland, my nana was sick and we were there for nearly 3 months, it was very sad as my nana passed away while we were there but I got to spend time with her and the rest of the family which made me happy too.

Welcome to the Northern Territory, we loved it here and it was so good to get back to the hot weather again!

We came from South Australia into the Northern Territory and stayed the night right on the border at a little overnight free camp on the Stuart Highway, it was so cool, they had a line there and if you stood on one side of the line you were in the Northern Territory but on the other side, you were in South Australia! Dad and I played tennis over the “border” and used the line marked in the car park as our net. That night we saw our first NT sunset and thought it was amazing!!

Our first big stop the next day was Uluru, we stayed at #ayersrockresort in Yulara. This is really the nearest place to stay to the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, it's also the main area with shops restaurants, and an art gallery too. There's so much to do here, you need a National Park Pass to be able to visit, the 1st day we went to see the Olgas /Kata Tjuta. #katatjuta #theolgas. These just looked like massive rocks to me but they're called domes and there are 36 of them in total making up Kata Tjuta/Mount Olga, they cover an area that's 21.68 square km. The highest dome called Mount Olga is 546m high that's 198 m taller than Uluru. We did the Valley of the Winds Walk in the morning, it was quite steep and rocky but it was amazing, in the afternoon we did the Walpa Gorge walk which was much easier!

Sunset viewing at Uluru is really funny!! People go to the sunset car park early and have drinks and snacks waiting for the sun to set but when it was happening I said to my dad why is the sunset happening behind us?? So, the reason for this is that when the sun is setting the colour of Uluru changes too (see pictures below) and that's what makes it a really unusual and special sunset to see!

The next morning we were up really early to see the sunrise and again there’s a huge change in the colour as the sun rises too. It's really hard to explain how amazing it all is!

The base walk around Uluru is about 10km, we had our bikes with us and decided to cycle around, you can hire bikes at the base to do this too, it was much quicker than walking! We also did The Mala Walk and the Liru Walk which leads to the Cultural Centre, this was really interesting to see, you can learn about the traditional land owners culture through displays and presentations. There is also a cafe selling amazing pies and an Aboriginal art gallery selling paintings and other interesting things. For the park's Anangu traditional owners Uluru and Kata Tjuta tell important creation stories (Tjukurpa) and hold spiritual significance as they are places where the creation stories connect. It's because of the cultural significance and to protect Uluru that they closed it in October 2019 to people climbing it.

We did a night-time tour to see The Field of Lights which is close to Uluru, its been running since 2016, it was supposed to close at the end of 2020 but has now been extended indefinitely. There were parts of it that were amazing but there were also a lot of lights not working and we didn't get a lot of time to look around it all so I wasn't too impressed!

Our next stop after Uluru was Kings Canyon. We did the Canyon Rim walk which was worth the 500 steps up at the start of the walk and the 6kms to walk. We camped at a great campsite #kingscanyonresort and we met a family who live near us on the Northern Beaches. They had a great bar and restaurant where we had dinner and also at the top of a hill they had this cool little caravan called the sunset bar, where they played live music and we could watch the sunset, there were even a few dingos hanging around.

The next stop was Alice Springs. We were lucky enough to arrive here on the weekend of The Finke Desert Race. The town was very busy! They had night markets the day we arrived and also had some of the guys who were racing doing stunt jumps in the main street on motorbikes and quad bikes, it was so cool to see. We went to see the motorbikes doing the time trials to see in which order they started in the race, dad got up really early the next day to watch the start of the race, but it was really cold so mum and me stayed in bed! It was great to meet Toby Price and see him in action.

Another great place we visited we visited while in Alice Springs was The School of Air, it was really interesting as there were some kids travelling like me who were enrolled with them as well as families who live on cattle stations in the outback who can't get to a normal classroom in a school. We went on a weekend so didn't get to see the teachers in action but if you visit during the week you can see the teachers as they teach the kids online. It reminded me of home learning during covid!