We travelled this week to one of Australia's icons - Uluru. Known as the red centre, this famous natural landscape is located in the Northern Territory 2500km from Sydney in the middle of this massive country. It was amazing to look out the window of the plane and see the changing landscape of Australia below. The thin habitable strip of land along the eastern coast quickly turns into endless arid outback with changing colours of ancient white salt flats, red rock, and sparse brown clumps of what must be the world's hardiest vegetation. My impression of the outback as a desolate wasteland of sand, sun, and snakes was quickly forgotten as we ventured to the first of our two main destinations, Kata-Tjuta. This is an impressive collection of rock conglomerations jutting out of the surprising green landscape of trees, bushes, and wild flowers. There were no snakes luckily, but there were certainly flies. Our last minute purchase of bug nets was well worth it. We were impressed to learn that the Aborigines of this area have been living here for over 22 000 years and have adapted to this harsh climate with amazing techniques for survival. We rose at 4 am to see the sun rise over Uluru. This is a truly majestic rock to experience and it surpassed our highest expectations. To the local Native people it was and remains an important spiritual place. We left the red centre feeling very fortunate to be able to experience one of the world's most unique environments. Paul
We travelled this week to one of Australia's icons - Uluru. Known as the red centre, this famous natural landscape is located in the Northern Territory 2500km from Sydney in the middle of this massive country. It was amazing to look out the window of the plane and see the changing landscape of Australia below. The thin habitable strip of land along the eastern coast quickly turns into endless arid outback with changing colours of ancient white salt flats, red rock, and sparse brown clumps of what must be the world's hardiest vegetation. My impression of the outback as a desolate wasteland of sand, sun, and snakes was quickly forgotten as we ventured to the first of our two main destinations, Kata-Tjuta. This is an impressive collection of rock conglomerations jutting out of the surprising green landscape of trees, bushes, and wild flowers. There were no snakes luckily, but there were certainly flies. Our last minute purchase of bug nets was well worth it. We were impressed to learn that the Aborigines of this area have been living here for over 22 000 years and have adapted to this harsh climate with amazing techniques for survival. We rose at 4 am to see the sun rise over Uluru. This is a truly majestic rock to experience and it surpassed our highest expectations. To the local Native people it was and remains an important spiritual place. We left the red centre feeling very fortunate to be able to experience one of the world's most unique environments. Paul
Your pictures are beautiful!! It sounds like you had a wonderful trip!
ReplyDeleteGlad to see you guys are having such a great time! Beautiful pics!
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