We were told not to go.

Summer temperature at Alice Springs normally reaches the 40s (104+).  Getting there by car or even by Air Andy (small plane), was out of the question.  The distance from Alice Springs to Melbourne is 2255 km or 1401 miles.  It would be like driving from NYC to Key West but the landscape would be full desert for nearly all of it.

It really is in the middle of nowhere.

Andy and the girls weren’t all that eager to make the journey – leave lovely Melbourne where we promised to stay put (generally) and travel to the Australian desert (“the Outback”) in sweltering heat just to see a ROCK?

Yep.

Andy came around to the idea after unseasonably mild weather was forecast for Alice Springs (only 27 degrees!).  We got Quantas flights and inexpensive hotels lined up and before the girls could protest further, we were off!

Andy and I had read Bill Bryson’s novel on Australia, A Sunburned Country, as our companion book for Australia.  It is a informative and very witty travelogue.  From it and our trusty National Geographic travel guide we decided to fly all the way to the airport closest to Uluru, then drive to Alice Springs for the return flight to Melbourne.  We arrived at our hotel in time to take a dip in the pool, before setting out for Uluru (the preferred Aboriginal name for what the early settlers called Ayers Rock).  We took a short walk at the base of Uluru, where we walked into a cave where women taught girls the skills to survive in an unforgiving desert and see cave drawings, swatting flies as we went.  As the time for sunset neared the sky was clouding up considerably but we made our way to the Sunset Viewing Area and waited.  We set up our picnic, the girls hopped up on the roof of our car, and all of us snapped pictures of “the rock” which was looking dark.  A few fellow viewers gave up on the sunset but we stayed on.  My gut instinct was that the rock would light up once the sun dipped below the clouds. Luckily, that proved to be the case.  Lauren took the best of our photos, as you will see.

We talked a bit about the role of Uluru in the culture of the Aboriginal people – its shape and markings are evidence of their creation story and as such is a sacred place, akin to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.   We talked a little too about the similarities between Aboriginal and Native American notions of land and property.  Uluru “belongs” to the Aboriginal people and is leased back to the Australian government.  But like the Native Americans, the notion of land ownership is a foreign concept:  one belongs to the land, not the other way around.

In the end, all of us were moved by THE ROCK; though the girls maintain that I was moved most.  And I probably was.  I can’t describe it so I’m taking an easy way out and giving you an excerpt from Bryson’s book:

“You realize that you could spend quite a lot of time — possibly a worryingly large amount of time; possibly a sell-your-house-and-move-here-to-live-in-a-tent amount of time — just looking at the rock, gazing at it from many angles, never tiring of it.  You can see yourself in a silvery ponytail, barefoot, and in something jangly and loose-fitting, hanging out with much younger visitors and telling them, And the amazing thing is that every day it’s different, you know what I’m saying? It’s never the same rock twice.  That’s right, my friend–you put your finger on it there.  It’s awesome.  It’s an awesome thing. Say, do you by any chance have any dope or some spare change?”