Day 8 - Tuesday February 20, 2024 - Kata Tjuta and the ride to Alice Springs

By Ellen Outten

 

Our hotel in Uluru/ Ayers Rock at the national park

We had a nice slow morning and even easier day today.  

If we wanted to, we could take the 5:30 am bus ride.to see sunrise over Uluru.  I passed.  Wayne and I had breakfast at 6:30, our luggage went out at 7:30 and we were on the bus at 8:30 for a short ride and a short 3,500 trek up to a lookout viewpoint of Kata Tjuta, translated as Many Heads.  It is another beautiful sedemtary limestone rock formation.

The 36 domes that make up Kata Tjuṯa / Mount Olga cover an area of 8.37 sq. mi.







Our guide gave us a nice explanation of the mountain and some.of the plants and trees in the vicinity.

Afterwards, it's a 300 mile bus ride to Alice Springs.  So today is a bus day.  We arrive about 4 pm and at 6 pm we have a bush barbeque in the outback.

We made one bathroom stop on the Curtis Station and a lunch stop at where we bought our own lunch at the Erldunda Desert Resort.  aka a convenience store.  

Are you a Bloke or a Sheila?

Along our 300 mile, straight road, no turnoffs, our lunch stop/convenience store

We passed through Curtain springs  cattle station which is 16,000 sq miles and bigger than King Ranch in Texas.  But this ranch is only in the lower part of top 50 cattle station of those in Australia. It stocks about 1 cow per 2 miles.

On the way to Alice Springs, traveled through the geographic center of Australia.


We could feed the Emus or have them for lunch🤣

There's an eagle's nest, the largest eagle in Australia 


Camels are common in Australia.  One-humped, camels from North Africa, the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent were imported as valuable beasts-of-burden from British India and Afghanistan during the 19th century for transport and the exploration and colonisation of central Australia i.e. the Outback!  There are now between 1 and 2 million camels in Australia. They had a camel farm at the last comfort stop.

This one has a crutch 

Our last stop was at Stewart's Well cattle station.  Good time to take a picture.

  Modeling our fly fighting gear!



The day ended with a great BBQ which took place out in an old quarry, just outside of the town of Alice Springs.  Steaks were bbq'd and a great salad, as well as baked potatoes.  They call bread here, damper...one of the cooks made the dough in front of us and baked it in stew pot over an open flame. After dinner we were entertained by a lovely singer and some traditional Australian songs. At the end of the show, as it was all outside, all the lights were turned off so that we could see what little stars there were.  Even though there weren't many due to the clouds, it was really neat to be that far out in the middle of nowhere with the lights out to just look up and see the sky. Imagine going out power Road into the desert, being away from everyone and seeing the sky in the middle of the desert. That's a very similar to what we enjoyed tonight.

On the way to the dinner, our bus driver pointed out some of the animals just off the road. I got to see my first dingo and my first kangaroos.

Dingo, with the pointed eard



Hello to you two kangaroos 


Some of our group participated in the show 

Making bread (damper)

Our stage

Our hostess for the evening 


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