Day 109 5/01/2015

The alarm went off at 0430 and slightly jaded we got up, ate a little breakfast and headed to the reception area to be picked up at 5am by our shuttle bus.  It was full again (and one of many buses out that morning) showing how popular seeing sunrise over the Rock is.  It's a Unesco World Heritage Site and one of Australia's most recognisable natural landmarks.  We drove to the viewing point, 180 degrees from where we were at sunset yesterday, and with the crowds awaited sunrise. Again as it was a little cloudy, the rock wasn't in its full red glow but it was still very special and spiritual.  However we later found out that it being cloudy and slightly cooler meant that the rangers opened up the only route you can take to the top.  We um'd and argh'd about going up as it is a very spiritual place for the Anangu, the traditional owners of Uluru, but our desire to climb up this amazing piece of geology won over.  It was a very steep, slippy climb to the top, by passing a lot of people trying to get up with poor choices of footwear.  We were glad the sun was still low for the majority of the climb as we came out into it on the summit plateau.  We then had a 500m undulating walk across the very windy plateau to reach the summit cairn at 863m (most of the bulk of the rock is actually underground).  We had climbed just under 350m but it felt twice that in the heat (it was already over 28 degrees at 7am) and steepness of the climb.  We looked out across the amazing 360 degree panorama and took at lot of photos (again a lot of them sadly lost now) and then headed down.  We got back to the bottom at just after 8am to see that the ranger had closed the climb up as it was already too hot.  We filled up our water bottles (the recommended min amount is to drink at least 1 litre an hour) and headed off on the marked trail for the 9.4 km/3 hour walk around the base of Uluru.  It was a hot, tiring walk but amazing to see the Rock at all angles, seeing the ancient formations and reading about the legends along the way.  We made it all the way round and headed to the visitor centre for a well earned cup of tea!  Our shuttle bus picked us up at 12pm and we spent the afternoon back in our room having a couple of hours kip, chilling out and starting to plan what we wanted to do when we were in Victoria and Tasmania over the next 4 weeks.  That evening we headed to the local cafe and Diane had an uninspiring beefburger, whilst Simon was adventurous and had a kangaroo burger.  He said it was quite gamey and strong but he couldn't persuade Di to try a little piece.  We had an early night ready for a mid morning departure back to the airport for our flight to Melbourne.

Sunrise over Uluru

 

The route up to the plateau

On top of the summit with Kata Tjuta in the distance 

Desert Gardens Hotel