Uluru-Kata Tjuta – Ikara – Barossa

To start off the term 3 holidays, I headed straight from Alice Springs to Uluru. I drove south to Erldunda and then turned west at an old roadhouse with a backyard full of pet emus. After being surrounded by the McDonnell Ranges for a couple of months, driving through the totally sparse landscape was a bit of a shock, and I was very quickly tired of the … nothingness. Some recommendations here if you ever find yourself on a long and boring drive:

- Pull over for lunch and blast your old house party playlists (come on, I know you have them stored somewhere in Spotify too) and have a little dance break.
- Drive in silence for 30 minutes. After that, everything seems brilliant.
- Determine if the people driving in the opposite direction are lovely humans (people who wave back) or evil devil spawn (people who ignore the wave).

After about five hours, I made it to Yulara which is pretty much a little resort town on the outskirts of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. When I started to get closer, the weather completely changed and suddenly I’d left the blue skies of Alice behind and was headed straight for the grey blanket covering Uluru.

It was the late afternoon and I was pretty tired, but I had a drone show booked so I had to rally! A drone show is probably the most un-Layla-like thing to do, but it had been recommended as a really great way to hear to Mala story from Uluru and drink some wines, so I was pretty keen. The weather wasn’t in my favour though and by the time we got to the show, it was too windy for the drones to fly. Instead, they put on a sound and light show which depicted the great ocean that used to flood central Australia 500 million years ago. There was no narration or storytelling, so I had to look it all up afterwards, but apparently when the ocean covered the continent, the rocky and sandy sediments separated to form Uluru (sandy) and Kata Tjuta (rocky). The show was really pretty and even though I missed out on the drones, I still really enjoyed the introduction to such a magical place. Plus, I’m a geography nerd so this really suited me.

The next day I got up early for sunrise; for my few days in Uluru I was expecting lots of cloud and even a little rain. My only chance at getting some sun was first thing in the morning. So I drove out to the sunrise viewing platform with a million other people and hoped to see the striking sunrise colours. Unfortunately, the cloud cover stayed low, so even though sunrise was beautiful and there were moments of warm orange on Uluru, it wasn’t that postcard perfect moment (oh well! It rarely is). I hung around and made a coffee, waiting to see if the sun would come out some more (which it tried to do!) before moving on for a walk.

Light display at Uluru.

As it turned out, the wind that stopped the drone show would soon become my best friend because while I was on the 10km base walk around Uluru, the constant wind kept most of the flies at bay. I walked past plenty of people with those ridiculous fly nets over their heads, so I knew that on other days the flies must have been unbearable, but on this day there was only a few that really frustrated me so I was pretty lucky.

The walk was spectacular and I really loved seeing Uluru up close, noticing the little flakes of sand crumbling away and the black algae from where the waterfalls run down. Some other short walks that connected to the base walk told creation stories which were really interesting – they’re some of my favourite things to learn about when I get to a new place! I was pretty disappointed in some people though who were clearly taking photos of sensitive sites that were signposted as “no photos allowed”, and an older couple who were complaining about not being able to hike up anymore – ummm just respect the culture, folks. It aint that hard.

Near the end of my big walk I made it to a really calm and quiet watering hole where I was able to sit in peace for a moment before going back to the car. Here I learned about some traditional hunting practices which I thought was really cool – it said that the Anangu used to wait at the watering hole, hiding, while a flock of emus would rest and drink. Then as the emus left, the people would wait until there was just one emu remaining, and kill it when the others were already gone. This way, the emus that survived wouldn’t think of the watering hole as a dangerous place where they might get ambushed, and the people could count on emus returning again. It reminded me a lot of not taking more than you need and always leaving enough so there’s more to come back to.

I was pretty wrecked after the walk and so much learning that I had a quick nap in the van before driving out to Kata Tjuta. Meaning “many heads” in Anangu, the outline of the rocky formations looks exactly like that from afar! Here I did a couple of little walks, but nothing too strenuous – just enough to learn a little about the formation and landscape. I was hoping to stay out near Kata Tjuta to watch sunset, but it was such a cloudy day that I knew it wouldn’t show that spectacular red and orange glow, so instead I headed back to camp.

Kata Tjuta formation. 

There was a big drive ahead of me the following day, so I said goodbye to the national park and backtracked to the roadhouse with emus. It was a pretty rainy day, so I was happy to be stuck in the car knowing there wasn’t much else I could do other than stay on the move. My plan was to hit the South Australia border and stop for the day, but when I got there it was still so early and I’d caught wind of a little pub only a couple of hours away that let you camp out the back. After a long day of driving in the rain, a beer and a sit down in a warm pub really appealed to me, so I kept moving until I reached Marla. It wasn’t much, but it was exactly what I needed so I took my book to the bar and warmed up while these older ladies put 70s rock songs on the jukebox.

Everyone had told me that there isn’t much to see or do as you drive south from Alice – they all mention Uluru and Coober Pedy and then say, “but that’s it!” So in my mind the drive would be barren and desolate for hundreds of kilometres, with not a single site or place to pull over for a brief stretch of the legs. I was right! It was a truly boring drive. The most exciting thing I saw was a wedgetail eagle eating a kangaroo. That was pretty hardcore. Eventually I made it to the oasis Coober Pedy, where I had a little explore around the galleries and museum, and popped into the bakery to refuel. I learned a little bit about the massive water dinosaurs that used to inhabit the area when it was all ocean, and saw some interesting fossils. But unless I wanted to spend tens of thousands of dollars on some opals, there wasn’t a heap more to see so I kept on moving, slowly but surely towards Port Augusta. When I arrived there the following day, I felt a sense of familiarity for some reason. I’ve never been to SA before, so I’ve definitely never been to Port Augusta, and yet somehow the town reminded me a bit of some places that I already knew, like little coastal towns in Victoria. After being in the desert for so long it was really cool to see the ocean again too, I think I must take it a bit for granted living in Hobart and always visiting the Mornington Peninsula; the ocean is just always around! And even though I adored the red mountains in central Australia, I was beginning to miss the sea.

I walked around the town here for a bit, visiting some op shops and posting a birthday present to my nephew. I walked along the foreshore for a bit and visited the arid botanical garden before driving a little bit out of town to a free campsite for the night.

The next morning was when I finally made it into Ikara Flinders Range National Park. I was driving along, around five or ten minutes outside of Hawker when a slow Toyota van with Victorian number plates pulled out in front of me. They chugged along slowly and I instantly knew it was mum and dad, so I flashed my lights, gave them a big wave and we pulled into town together. Dad and I must think alike at times because we’d both bought a little pastry to share for morning tea (Portuguese tart from him and quandong cake from me), so we ate these with a cup of tea and then drove into the national park together to set up camp for a few days.

My uncle Lindsey had told us that just a couple of nights in Ikara wasn’t enough, and that we’d need as much time as possible – he was very right. Even though we had around four full days, there was still so much we could have done. On our first day we walked an easy route to Wilpena Pound and a little lookout where mum slipped over and hurt her hand. Normally, people would be quite concerned if their mum fell over and seemed to have hurt herself, HOWEVER my mind flicked back to when I was three years old, bitten by a snake in the bush and mum’s precise words were, “just wash it off in the water, you’ll be fine.” (Awful advice for a snake bite, but in mum’s defence I said a “stick bit me” so what else did I really expect?) So anyway, I was pretty reluctant to give her any sympathy. “You’ll be fine,” I said, as I forced her to keep walking on, “We have a first aid kit in the car. I can wrap it up and you can have some Panadol and et voila!” For the next 24 hours though, mum kept complaining about how sore her wrist was and that maybe it was broken (so dramatic!) but then she took the bandage off and her whole wrist was purple… eek! It took about two minutes for the doctor at the hospital to deduce that, yes, it was broken... Sorry!

So with a broken arm we explored the national park for a few days, driving through a dry riverbed in mum and dad’s van, visiting a little art gallery, seeing some 5,000 year old rock art, and playing cards at a really nice pub in Parachillna. One day, dad and I set off on a hike up Mount Ohlsen Bagge and there were all these warning signs before the beginning of the walk stating, “Don’t ty this hike if you’re unfit! Don’t do it if it’s too hot! BE CAREFUL.” It turned out to be a really great hike though and I was impressed that dad made it all the way to the summit with me; initially he just said that he would walk the first 500 meters or so and see how he felt, so making it to the top of the very steep and scrambly track was a good effort! It was super windy at the summit though so we didn’t spend long there before heading back down and seeking refuge in the pub to watch the AFL grand final.

Eventually we had to keep moving, and by Monday morning we were off to the Barossa Valley. It was a long drive from Ikara, so we broke it up with a visit to Magnetic Hill, a weird place where if you put your car in neutral at the bottom of the hill, it’s magnetically pulled to the top! Don’t ask me how …. It just works… And since we were driving through Clare Valley, we thought it would be ridiculous to not stop in at a winery for a little taste too.

We stayed in Tanunda for a couple of nights, and spent the time doing some classic Barossa Valley activities… mainly visiting wineries and eating delicious food. Wandering through the town was also really great – it was a very picturesque town with leafy trees and houses that go right to the street, so even just spending one morning walking up and down the main stipp and visiting some cafes and bookstores was a big highlight. On our final evening together, my parents and I went for dinner at a nice restaurant that one of the guys in a winery recommended to us. It was a cute little tapas bar and the food was phenomenal – I was thinking about it still the next morning! We ordered dumplings, gnocchi, beetroot buratta and a cremem brule with candied orange. I couldn’t pick a highlight, it was all soooo good!

The following morning we packed up and said goodbye nice and early to each other. My parents set off back to Victoria, and I set my sights even further south on Adelaide.