A Hike at Kata Tjuta

Outback Adventure - Part 4
The stars were still sparkling when Mark roused us at 4am. As the swags around me shivered to life, I blinked up at the rising moon and the Southern Cross in the spot Bjorn said it would be.

Cereal, coffee, tea and juice were quickly consumed and our swags lashed to the top of the trailer. Twenty people accounted for in the van Mark turned to us and sang, "Everybody ready to see some more big rocks?" Of course we responded in the affirmative and off we headed to see Kata Tjuta.

Located 25 km east of Uluru, Kata Tjuta is made up of a number of intertwining globules of rock that are both similar and different to Uluru. After a twenty minute drive, our van pulled into a parking lot full of buses. Bjorn sped up a path of red sand first, focusing his large camera, a black camera bag bumping on his back with each step.

Click, click, click, click, click.

We arrived at a viewing perch full of another murder of tourists. Or at least, that's what Kate and I decided a bunch of tourists should be called: A murder of tourists.

From the perch we could see Uluru in the distance at right and Kata Tjuta straight ahead as the sun began to rise behind us.

What did I sign up for, some kind of buddhist retreat? All this sun rising and setting. Next we'd be using our swags as yoga mats and shaking scorpions off our wrists as we did downward facing dog on the sand dunes.

I'm sorry; I'm making this sound very commercial. Parts of it certainly are, such as these run-ins with other groups. But the hikes, the nights at our campsite, are all about us as a group and the experience we share in this unique place. And even at this perch, I must admit that the sun rising over Kata Tjuta is spectacular.



Panorama of Kata Tjuta with and without tourists.

The mounds of Kata Tjuta wrap in around and beside each other, a chorus singing to the sky. As we admired and clicked, our four guides chatted off to the side. One of them, nicknamed Ausie Guide by our group, was quite the character. A man's man with thick black hair that sprouts in thick curls out of every follicle. His head of hair is kept like a massive mop, pointing in every direction. He wore beige shorts so tight and short you could see his substantial cojones and associated plumbing in iMax 3D. He wore socks high up on his knees above elephantine hiking boots and spoke with a voice that reverberated through the desert dunes. For the guys it was man-love, as they couldn't stop talking about this guy for the rest of the trip.

As the sun finished rising we were ushered back to the van, counted again and off we headed for our hike.

Kata Tjuta isn't made smooth sandstone like Uluru. These rock formations are composed of conglomerate, a rock consisting of boulders and small stones of varying rock types cemented together by a cement-like sandstone. We begin the Valley of the Winds walk, a 7.4km circuit that will take about 3.5 hours. From the carpart we follow one path uphill, our ankles teetering across the uneven footings, then down the valley and around in between the folds of rock.


Two adult kangaroos and one joey graced us with their presence at the first lookout then sprinted off into the bush.



Colleen at Karingana Lookout with
her precious bottle of water. It's windy!

We walked down the steep steps into valleys and across creek beds then up to the Karingana Lookout, where the picture of me was taken. Then we went down to the Valley of the Winds, which is named quite appropriately. As in, it was windy.

It was at this point that my camera card got full and I was doing the on-the-go delete game, where you have to decide which photos of rocks to keep and which to delete. Tough going! Otherwise I would have pictures of this valley. Perhaps even a panorama from all angles. But it wasn't to be for this hike.

In part 5 of this adventure, we got a very special surprise! I'll try to get it up in a couple of days.