Red Centre day 11 Field of lights, Uluru and Kata Tjuta

31st July

Day 11

Field of Lights, Uluru and Kata Tjuta. -172km

Early this morning we were picked up by the bus and taken out to the field of lights. This art  installation involves 380km of optical fibre, 36 solar panels, and 50,000 handcrafted delicate light stems. You view it in the dark (hence the early morning) and it looks just like a soft carpet of merging pastel in pinks,  blues, greens and yellows spread across the landscape.   Very hard to capture with the camera in low light, but here is an idea for you from the brochure.

Once the daylight emerges it looks like white wildflowers growing up in the space.  An amazing phenomenon.  It will be in place until 31st March 2017, so there is plenty of time to plan a visit if you are interested. I'm not sure that I would go just to see the field of light, but Uluru and Kata Tjuta arve attraction enough for me, so this was just an added extra.

 Today we made our way in to the park again. While Trevor and Evelyn walked the circuit of "the rock" (10.6km + side paths) , Craig climbed up it and Erica tagged on to the ranger talk and walk, where an aboriginal and a white ranger shared some of the geology, history and cultural info about the rock and the places that we passed. The Aboriginal ranger was great at sharing of his culture, and I ended up with a better understanding. I was amazed at the semi permanent waterhole at the base of the rock (formed where a great cascade of water comes over when it rains, and then remaining due to the the shady situation it is in) and the beautiful green vegetation. When the women gathered fruit, seeds, honey ants and other goodies from this area they only needed to be within about 2 or 3 km of the rock due to the abundance of good gathering in the area. I find the way that the Aboriginals are tied to their land and the way the land is tied to their culture and stories fascinating, though I only glimpse the very edge of it at times.

On my way back from the walk I ran into Al and Zita, who had arrived too late for the ranger talk, but were walking and talking anyway.

Having all met up again back at the car park we all made our way across to Kata Tjuta, stopping along the way at the viewing platform, which is situated on a sandhill. We pulled in to the picnic area and ate our very late lunch together,before we then moved over to the walking trails. Sadly, it was already too late in the day to do any of the longer walks, so we opted for the Karu lookout, and then continued on a short way past that, before turning back. This was a bit disappointing, as we all would have loved to do more walking here, but with our lack of good sleep, exertions in the previous day and earlier walks that day none of us was in a fit state to be pushing too hard.

Al and Zita are staying another night at Yulara, so they opted to continue on the walk to the second lookout. We said goodbye and will meet them back in Adelaide. The remaining four of us headed back towards the Yulara township performing the filling (diesel at 178c/l), and shopping that was re quired, before heading back out towards Curtin Springs. About 30 km out of town is a roadside stop just over the hill from the road in a sandy spot with scattered trees. If you geocache, look for the cache alled "Uluru Lookout" . Here there were already 10 or so vehicles parked for the night, but we had plenty of room to spread ourselves. Our young neighbours were sharing music that wasn't really to our taste, but kindly agreed to turn it off when requested politely at bed time. We enjoyed a nice fire and relax, dropping into our beds beneath yet another beautiful clear starry sky. We had been warned that a weather change was on the way, so we weren't surprised when a strong wind came up in the night.