Uluru March 7

Up at 5:30, breakfast at 6:00 for an early departure for the drive to Uluru, formerly known as Ayers Rock.  This may be the most prominent reversion to Aboriginal names in Australia, where it seems they are trying hard to compensate for the years of horrible treatment of the native population.  So Uluru it is.

We stopped for bathrooms and coffee at a desolated spot in the desert, the Stuart’s Well Camel Farm where they had a couple of camels waiting for tourists to take rides.  Until the railroad was completed, camels were the primary mode of transport in desert Australia, and they were released into the wild when no longer needed.  They’ve become a nuisance, and now are being culled.  There used to be one million wild camels in the country; the number is now down to 400,000.  There was a small general store and a café at the stop, and looking around we saw this in the freezer:

Think we can find some at Wegmans?    As we approached the rock we had a view like this, coming from the northeast:

The geology is fascinating, but in just a couple of words, the rock is part of a long, mostly buried rock formation, and it is bent up so that the top of Uluru is the end of the rock.  It is a giant monolith, the largest in the world but like an iceberg under water, most is underground!  The exposed part is 1200 feet high and 6 miles around.  We had a late lunch in the Cultural Center and then went for two walks at two different sites at the edge of the rock:

There is some rock art here:

We then checked in to our hotel, and just before sunset went to a western side viewing spot where our trip leader, Jim Archibald, set up a table with snacks, champagne and orange juice, and we had mimosas (or plain champagne) as we watched the sunset:

 Then dinner.  Tomorrow is a travel day to Cairns, the last adventure on this trip, where we’ll go out snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef.