Our home for the next three nights in Yulara, a tourist resort 'town' in the middle of the Australian desert, created in the 1970s to formalise and keep check on tourism in the vicinity of Ayers Rock (or, as we call it nowadays, Uluru.) Yulara came about to replace the unmonitored building of motels and other establishments at the base of the rock, to help preserve the world-famous landscape, and to filter tourists - like us - into a central point. It was ahead of its time, built sympathetically so that the resort is not visible in the landscape, yet providing a comfortable environment in which to live, even in this remote corner of the world. The name Uluru doesn't really mean anything - it's a proper noun, the name of the rock given to it by the Pitjanjatjara people (part of the Anangu people,) but the name itself has no particular meaning. The site is sacred to the Aboriginal people, who since 26 October 1985 have been officially recognised as its traditional owners. In turn, they have leased it back to the national park authority for 99 years, and together they manage and maintain the park. Climbing the rock, which always seems to crop up in conversation, is a contentious issue - the traditional owners have always requested that people don't do this, and in October 2019 it will be officially banned.
We're up at 3.45am the following morning. It's Armistice Day 2018, the 11th also falling on Remembrance Sunday this year, particularly fitting as it marks the 100th anniversary of the end of hostilities. The Australian news has it pretty well-covered this morning - 65,000 Australians died in the First World War, and today they are remembered here and around the Commonwealth. It seems bizarre that Australians were involved in that conflict, from the perspective of somebody sitting in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on all sides by desert, with galahs squawking overhead - how could a war on the other side of the world have affected anybody here?
Our early rise is to board a coach destined for Uluru, to watch the monolith wake up in the sunrise. A strange spot of rain doesn't dampen the excitement, and as we get our first real view of the rock, so we realise that all the reports are true - it really does amaze the senses. The rock changes character completely in the sunrise, as it moves from its dusky grey to more familiar orange-red, until it shines bright in the full sun of the morning, totally dominating the landscape. One can only imagine what it must have been like for the earliest explorers to come so suddenly upon this feature - and one can also finally understand why the rock is held in such reverence by Australia's earliest people.
We leave the rock for another famous feature - Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) lies some 20 miles to the west. Again very sacred to the Pitjanjatjara people, the name translates as 'Many Heads' for in Aboriginal lore, these enormous boulders are the heads of the ancestors. There are 36 huge domes in total - a much bigger formation than Uluru - although tourists are limited to two permitted footpaths, one of which traverses the Walpa Gorge (translating roughly as 'Windy Gorge,') an awe-inspiring path into the rocks which gives an understanding of the majestic scale of the geology. We are absorbed in our environment, for this is so completely different from anywhere we've ever been before, and there's a definite sense of both spirituality and ancientness about the place. I want to learn more about the Aboriginal traditions here, but our guide can't tell us much as he's not allowed to know, which I find a little disappointing. Nonetheless, it;s a remarkable place, and although we're back at our hotel by 10am, we feel as though we've had a whole day out.
The heat of the day dictates that any outdoor activity is reserved for mornings and evenings. In the middle of the day, we walk to the resort's little museum and art gallery, then move on to the 'town centre,' really a collection of two or three souvenir shops, an art gallery, and a little supermarket. The supermarket here isn't just for tourists - locals use it too, coming from remote settlements in the vicinity to do their shopping, so there's a good mix of foods and people. Notwithstanding the tourists, there's more than 1,000 people living here - many employed by the resort, along with the Anangu living in nearby communities. It is here that I realise that, far from being purely a tourist hang-out, the facilities are a lifeline for people living out in this remote stretch of central Australia. We really are in the wilderness - the nearest town, the famous Alice Springs, is more than 200 miles away.
The next morning, in the cool of the dawn, we walk across the resort through the bush, to the Imalung Lookout, with good view of Uluru 20 miles away, the more distant heads of Kata Tjuta, and hundreds of miles of unbroken desert. The trees in our immediate vicinity are alive with squawking, and we turn our heads to reveal what looks like a thousand galahs flapping in the branches. These birds are my favourite thing about this part of Australia, for they are gregarious and vivacious little things, full of character. From here we walk into the resort to catch the bus to Yulara Camel Farm, a little farmstead a couple of miles away, with an impressive collection of camels and other animals. The camel is not native to this continent, but is an unofficial icon of the Australian desert since being imported in the 1840s. Since this time they've gone feral and, being well-adapted to the climate and geography here, have evidently flourished. Nowadays camel milk is lucrative, prized by soap manufacturers. At the camel farm, the animals seem to live out a relaxed and care-free life, giving the occasional ride to tourists, and spending the rest of their time in spacious pens, with plenty of shade from the sun. It feels as though we've stepped back in time, for there's an old-fashioned shop and homestead, a windmill water pump, and some old coaches and other artefacts on display.
For our final evening at Yulara, the clouds thicken and give us a light misting of rain, hardly ideal conditions for the Uluru sunset viewing we've booked. In the end it turns out to be a damp squib, an unlucky reminder that, even in the desert, the rain can wreck even the best-laid plans. Uluru disappears from view not with its legendary blazing, but rather dissolving into the darkness, until we stand alone, wondering if it was ever there to begin with. It's a sad end to a memorable visit - tomorrow we leave this part of Australia, and unlike other places we've visited, we're fairly certain in the knowledge that we won't be back. It's not that we haven't enjoyed every moment - it's just that now we've experienced the splendour of Uluru and Kata Tjuta, and felt the remoteness of the unforgiving desert, there seems little reason to return. Still, we take with the curious depth of feeling that comes with being so far away from anywhere, and we feel almost intrepid as we board our Qantas flight to take us out of the iconic, mystifying Red Centre.
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