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Day 23: Uluru
We settled in nicely for our first of 3 nights at Ayers Rock resort camp ground. After our long drive yesterday we were all extremely tired and so had an early night.
Darren and I were up early as we were very keen to see sunrise over Uluru. The kids were all still in bed when Darren and I woke Micaela to let her know where we were going and we went up to the lookout in the resort to watch the sunrise. It was very peaceful to watch and we were glad we did it. The photos don't do the appearance of the rock justice.
Our plan for today was to do a few things this morning before making our way to Uluru.
We did a bit of washing, which I was actually able to hang on the line instead of putting it in the dryer, before making our way to Uluru.
Our first visit was to the cultural centre where we learnt all about the culture of the indigenous owners of the land. Surrounding the centre were a couple of shops selling Aboriginal art works and a cafe.
We had a look around the shops before having an early lunch prior to embarking on a walk around the base of Uluru.
All the literature describes the walk to be 10.6km in distance and expected duration 3 1/2 hours. We considered it would take us a little longer with the kids so we commenced the walk at 12pm.
Throughout the base walk there are a few other shorter walks that you can drive to and do independently. Each of those walks are only a few hundred metres in length.
We decided, seems this is our only day here, we would make the most of it, so we did the base walk aswell as the shorter walks.
The entire walk took us 4 hours, including lots of little rest stops along the way. We are so proud of our kids being able to walk that distance.
They were rewarded with gifts from the shop back at the cultural centre. Micaela got an Aboriginal painted bookmark and a hand crafted wooden snake, Ethan got a bigger snake and Brandon got a little hand crafted wooden lizard aswell as some music sticks.
They each went to bed complaining of sore legs tonight but we emphasised the fact that this should help them appreciate the size of Uluru.
We wanted to see the sunset at the designated viewing area so we ducked back to the park, picked up some supplies for tomorrow, before heading back to the national park to watch Uluru at sunset. We watched the sunset last night from the resort's lookout but it was much better close up and viewing it from due west.
During our stay at Coober Pedy, the kids made some friends who coincidently were on the tour with us, so we become friendly with their parents. We knew they were arriving here today and we bumped into them at the sunset viewing. The kids were so excited to see them again. We are hoping to catch up with them again tomorrow before we leave on Tuesday.
Tomorrow we plan to explore Tata Tjuta. It will be another full day of walks and there are no shops that serve food so we will be taking a packed lunch with us.
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