Day 2
We slept in a swag under the stars beside the campfire. It is pretty neat to sleep in but it was quite cold out and I was freezing when I woke up. During the night, one of the cows in the area decided to come for a visit. Cathy said it bumped her head and Lubinka almost ran into when she got up during the night to use the washroom. I slept through it all but it sounded like quite the event. We all laughed about it the next day.
We packed up camp and headed to Uluru. Along our drive we stopped to see Brumbys, the wild horses, as they crossed the road. They were beautiful and took off at a gallop for us after a quick pose for pictures. I never thought I would have ever had a chance to see wild horses. We also stopped to get firewood along the way. Along the drive, we noticed a rock formation in the distance and thought it was Uluru. Ross called it fool-uru and told us it was mt. Cook. About an hour later we saw Uluru in the distance. It was quite surreal with the red rock and piercing blue sky.
We stopped at our campsite for lunch and to leave the trailer and then we went to Uluru. We walked along the base and as well as along the Mala walk. During this walk we learned about the Mala people who are in longer in the area. The story is that they were the only aboriginal group to climb Uluru and during a ceremony to put up a decorated pole to invite other groups, they received an invitation to another groups ceremony. The Mala declined and as a result a devil dog was conjured by this group and it chased the Mala people south. Other aboriginal groups have stories of people running through their land being chased by the devil dog.
This reason as well as the fact there is no life on top of Uluru and possibly others are why no aboriginals climb up Uluru. The climbing goes against their spiritual beliefs and is greatly discouraged even though there is a path to climb up. People climb up Uluru along a path put there in the 1960s and the erosion of the rock as a result of this path is clearly visible. Many people have died during this climb and people have defecated along the trail or on the top of the rock since the climb is so long. This has resulted in extremely high amount of E. coli found in the water around the rock. Ross strongly encouraged us not to climb the rock. It hurt my heart that people did not have enough respect for the people or the land to stay off the rock and to not litter.
As we walked around the base of the rock, we also learned about the story of a golden marsupial mole. She was said to have put all the holes and caves in Uluru for the people when she saw them coming for the first time. After her work, she took a vacation and travelled south. She travelled underground and whenever she popped out of the ground to look around, a salt lake formed. The map of Australia shows the line of salt lakes south of Uluru.
We only managed to walk around half of the base of Uluru which was about 5km. We then went to a to to watch the sunset on Uluru and the colour change of the rock. It was pretty amazing to watch and the colours were beautiful. We headed back to camp after for dinner and a camp fire.
