Bit the bullet and rode the 25 km out to Uluru/Ayres Rock (interesting note: we are supposed to call the large pebble’ Uluru’ to respect the aboriginal owners nomenclature.

But.

The several groups of aborigines that I spoke to use European names – (Ayres Rock, Docker River) not the aboriginal names even if they recognise them; conclusion – see later posts for the difficulties of merging hundreds of aboriginal languages/cultures based on distances that can be walked with a European culture based on empires spanning significant portions of the globe).

Anyway, rode out, paid my $25 entry at the park boom gate and rode in to the cultural centre at Ayres Rock. Reading around the displays took a couple of hours and was quite interesting – even the aborigines often had difficulties living in the desert in this region. Their solution was to tough it out as long as possible then leg it to better resourced areas until it rained.

After a coffee from the cafe it was a short ride to the bottom of the climb of the rock. Locked the bike to a bench, went to the mudwalled dunny via a shadehouse with some great wooden benches, and then walked around the rock.

 

This 10 km walk took a couple of hours during which the CTAWA rang from their Toodyay weekend. Lots of cackling laughter and bonhomie.

After finishing the walk around the rock I had to decide whether to climb the rock or not. After considering the discussions with the aborigines camped at the Yulara campground, and considering that I was tired from walking around the rock and hadn’t eaten in four or five hours, I DID NOT CLIMB THE ROCK.