If I had a dollar for how often I’d been asked about driving ALONE from Alice Springs to Uluru, I’d – well, I’d have a few more Australian dollars.  I don’t know what it is out here, but apparently little ladies like myself need to be extra careful going down a flipping major highway to a National Park.  Whatever people.  For the record, all those who asked me this question happened to be men.

YES, it is ridiculously hot out here and there are long stretches of road where there is basically no cell service and no civilization for several kilometers.  But seriously dangerous?  Probably not.  Obviously you are smart enough to be driving a car in good working order and managing your gas consumption accordingly.  And you have extra water with you – just in case.

My drive was uneventful – short of interesting sites here and there – like lengthy reddish lizards running across the highway in front of me and trying not to run down the birds of prey (mostly Kites) who were grabbing said lizards (at least the small ones – Skinks!) off the road.  There were occasional grasshopper hordes that swarmed the car – but nothing I could not handle.

I stopped frequently on the way out – as multiple signs exhorted me to do (‘Rest!’,  ‘Arrive Alive!’,  you get the picture).  There are several roadhouses that cater to most of your needs – including alcoholic beverages.  I did notice that the bars were not open until noon, interesting.  Usually the roadhouses have other attractions, like camel farms, or cattle stations, or emus, whatever they think people will pull off the road to gander at.  I enjoyed the aboriginal art galleries which were housed in some of the roadhouses.

The closer I got to Uluru, the more I noticed a slight issue … Besides the searing heat – which was over 100 degrees (my car thermometer topped out at 43 degrees Celsius) there were clouds of flies … It was like Amityville Horror in the outback.  Seriously, upon stepping out of my car I would hear a faint drone that increased in intensity as the flies drew closer and in a couple of nanoseconds they would be crawling on my face – aiming for eyes, nose, mouth and ears.  Not to mention covering my arms, back, legs, you name it, they were there.  Insert primal scream here…

I had asked on my way down the Stuart Highway at one of the roadhouses (probably Mt. Ebenezer – all the roadhouses have colorful names) if I needed to be concerned about the flies at Uluru.  The guy at the counter gave me a deadpan stare and said, ‘the flies are atrocious’…  and he looked like a guy who did lots of outdoor living (I’m trying to be diplomatic – lots of interesting characters in the Northern Territory!)  – so if the flies bothered this guy – I was going to be completely freaked out.  I immediately purchased a fly net.

Back to my first major fly experience – I thought I would test the waters, so to speak, and see just how bad this fly problem was.  I had stopped at a deserted rest area which was not paved …  so lots of red earth around.  I wanted to snap a couple of pictures because the view was gorgeous.  I popped out of the car and quickly realized that the fly net was going to be required gear – as I flail-armed my way back to the car, with camera in hand, dancing around trying to rid my person of flies before getting back into the car (shrieking all the way).  Yes, it’s that bad.  Because there is virtually no traffic on the Stuart Highway (or maybe I was on the Lasseter Highway by now) nobody was around to witness this act. (I did repeat this performance nearly every time I got back in my car – wherever I was).

And so it goes …  My time in the outback generally saw me enclosed in a black net (at least my head was) and trying to drink water over or under the damn net.  I probably did not do enough of that judging by how horrible I usually felt after a few hours under the merciless Australian sun…   Holy cow people it was hot!  In fact, most of the walking trails around Uluru (which are FLAT) are closed by 11am – because, I assume, people routinely drop over dead.  Shade is hard to come by out here too – most of the countryside is low brush.

Ok – I realize this sounds like a place of severe torment – but really the landscape is stunning.  There is nothing in the world that looks like the Australian outback – even the Southwestern USA is quite a bit different.  Uluru itself is a mega huge rock – really a mountain which was pushed above the surface, but they believe that most of the rock goes several kilometers below the surface.  It is sandstone – and is essentially one piece – there are no joints, so it is homogenous.  The only inroads on the rock were made by water as it coursed down the rock, it created channels and these are usually blackened in color and have algae growing in them.

The time to check out Uluru is during the sunrise and sunset when the light is hitting the rock and the colors appear to be shifting.  I saw Uluru at sunset right before a major thunderstorm – so the sky was funky and the colors were probably not as vibrant as a normal sunset would have been.  But the drop in temperature was heaven!

I opted to visit Kata Tjuta, a different rock formation for sunrise.  That nearly did me in …  driving in the inky darkness of predawn, because there are basically no streetlights out here.  I’m not sure that I was fully awake (oops – dangerous little lady!) but I did make it over there about 15 minutes before the sun was completely up in the sky…  Probably not the coolest pictures (another oops).

This entire park is owned by the Anangu, specifically the Pitjantjatjara people.  Aborigines.  Both Uluru and Kata Tjuta are sacred areas for them.  They ask that you don’t climb Uluru – and in the summer they close the climb anyway (oh so hot…).  This appears to be kind of a tug of war with the Australian government as the original reason for getting tourists to Uluru was to climb the rock.  Now they are working to phase out the climbing … I’m not sure how well that is going.  The game played here was to give the Anangu the title to the land, but then to lease it back to the government for 99 years.  And now they are receiving less funding from the government as well – supporting only 30 or so rangers (down from 300 or so in it’s heyday), and only 7 of those are Aborigine.  I really have no place commenting on the issue and I only heard one side of the story from an Aborigine guide that explained much of the creation stories told about Uluru, during an early morning walk.  In general, the plight of Aborigine groups sounds hauntingly familiar to the plight of our own native Americans…

There are hundreds of aborigine groups and each has their own territory, customs and language.  Certainly there are similarities between them, especially with the creation stories or Dreamtime as they call it – the time when knowledge first came into being.  There are stories of Ancestor Beings who created land forms, plants and animals.  Many of the paintings they do are illustrating Dreamtime stories or in some cases showing daily tasks, like hunting or gathering of Bush Tucker.  Yes, Bush Tucker!  What a fabulous name for things you can eat in the bush…  Like wild figs, wild plums, witchetty grubs, honey ants… sounds yummy, no?

The grubs are found at the roots of the witchetty bush – they eat them raw (supposedly they taste like almonds).  The honey ants are located in vertical tunnels, well underneath the surface.  Here you can find the ‘honeypot’ version of an ant.  These are ants that have over-indulged and become food storage mechanisms for the rest of the worker ants.  They regurgitate this sweet nectar for the ant colony to eat when food is scarce.  The aborigines squeeze them to get the nectar out…  Needless to say, I did not partake of any bush tucker on this trip!  I fully admit to being a squeamish chicken!

I did attempt to walk around Uluru – after an 8am guided walk with the aforementioned Aborigine guide.  Seeing the rock up close is powerful and you understand how different it is geologically.  The colors and the formations are unlike anything I have seen before.  Unfortunately, being in the sun for 4 hours was powerful in a different way and I could feel myself melting (really really really).  I think I only walked the path for maybe 1 kilometer before I turned around and moved as swiftly as my drooping self could, back to the car and air-conditioning.  Then I drove around the rest of the rock and made extremely brief sojourns (with much flailing of arms) to take the occasional picture (much easier on my system).

All in all – a good outback experience (I forgot to tell you about Alice Springs though … maybe next blog I’ll manage that…).  I do recommend it – BUT – I would not go in the Summer!