Monday,December 12, 2022 .
We both set our alarms for 4am, but Jim’s phone was manually set in Sydney time, so we woke up at 2:30am for his alarm, and again at 4am for mine. Needless to say, my lovey’s phone is now set on automatic time for wherever we are!
We were picked up at our hotel at 4:35am by the Uluru camel farm bus. It was dark and chilly, a nice change from the heat of the day. There were about 15 of on our ride. Jim and I were loaded onto”Stumpy” at the rear of the string. He had no tail. They load the calm strong camel first at the rear. His job is to steady the end of the string. All the camels have a stick pieced thru their nose. Can’t have a bit like a horse because the camels are constantly chewing whatever is coming up from one of their stomachs!
We set out just at first light. Our male guide was on the lead camel, and our female guide (from Finland) walked along side the string of 10 camels. She answered our questions and took our photo at the Uluru viewing point. We had to hang on to the metal bar in front of each of us and lean back both when our camel got up and went back down. Fun!
We had our first real look at the red rock that rises out of the bush, Uluru. The area is sacred to the Aboriginal people, but from this distance there were no photo restrictions. It really is a wonderful, how this immense red rock came to be in the middle of relatively flat land.
After our ride, we had tea and beer bread spread with jam inside. I loved the old photos and stories about the old camel trains and the Afghans who cared for the camels. Once the railroad came to Australia, the camels were let loose as they were obsolete. They estimate that there are .5 to 1 million camels in the wild. All the camels in the Uluru camel farm were caught in the wild. They have around 60 camels.
They also have several cages around to the back. I finally saw a kangaroo!
After we got back, and after a nap, we went to the art gallery in hhe town center. It was very interesting hearing how the dot painting movement started among the Aboriginal people in the 1970’s. We learned about the stories the paintings tell. Many painting depict the story of the 7 sisters. They were fleeing from some guy, long story short, and they eventually ended up as stars in the sky!
Around 4:30pm we boarded a bus at our hotel for our field of lights dinner. Fun evening. We watched the sunset with Uluru in the distance. We had watched a man earlier in the day giving didgeridoo lessons. He performed for us at our dinner. All sorts of delicious things for dinner including lamb chops, crocodile salad, and grilled kangaroo. The very best part of the event was after dinner when it was very dark. The moon was not up, and all the lights and candles were off. An astronomer gave us a talk about the night sky. He pointed out various constellations over us and described which stars were used for navigation. Fascinating. The Southern Cross was just below the horizon. I could see it on my star finder app, but not in the sky.
We walked back to our bus through the field of lights. An installation of 50,000 solar powered lights.
