Yulara, Australia

03 Aug 2022

After pretty much a full days driving we finally made it into Yulara, the nearest town to Uluru (Ayers Rock). There’s some very fancy accommodation available but we didn’t want to leave Nigel alone we stayed with him in a camp site.

The town had a bit of a strange feel to it as it’s quite literally in the middle of nowhere but is full of tourists from all over the world giving it a bit of a Disneyland vibe but you don’t come here to visit Yulara itself..

The next day we drove into the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park which takes about 25 minutes and started to catch our first glimpses of Uluru along the way, the scale of it is quite breathtaking and no picture will really do it justice but as you can see I did try my best..

We visited the museum first to learn about some of the history behind the area and the significance it has to the local Aboriginal tribe, the Anangu. The following day we returned to take on 10km walk around the base of the rock (technically a sandstone monolith) which takes around 3 hours, there’s only one water refill site along the route so we took plenty with us as it can get very hot depending on the time of year. We stayed for the sunset which sets behind the rock and something you really can’t take your eyes off.

While slightly lesser known the other site in the park that Uluru shares the title with is Kata Tjuta. It’s a combination of rock formations spread over about 20km that to be fair are equally impressive. We scrambled across lots of the rock in our slightly inadequate footwear where quite often we were completely along, it was a bit of a surreal experience at times as it felt like being on another planet.

One our final day we headed into the national park one more time to catch the sunrise, one of the rare occasions where getting up at 5am is justified. At that time of day it was actually really cold so we put every layer we had and sat there admiring the view, really quite something.