We drove out to Uluru this morning after breakfast to complete our walk around the base. We started with a Ranger guided walk along the Mala trail, which started where the rock climb used to be. The ranger talk was uninspiring and tedious, however he did explain some of the rock art and what it meant.

We left the tour and made our own way around. Most of the walk today wasn’t close to the base, however gave a better perspective of the size of the rock. While the temperature overnight was below zero we were lucky to have a balmy morning with temperatures in the teens. I can see that this region would get uncomfortably hot in the summer months and walking around the base would be difficult. There are stories and legends about the rock and it’s various formations. Some involve the python lady and others involve the lizard man. All the stories have morals that were used to teach communities about values. The defining feature of this region is how harsh the landscape is and how difficult it would have been for the aboriginals to just survive.

We visited the Uluru Cultural Centre which explained some of the stories about the rock as well. The highlight for the kids was to find a working pay phone that allowed them to ring and send text messages. I also got to explain why it’s called “hanging up” by actually being able to hang up the phone at the end of the conversation.

Our final activity was a tour of the various sacred sites at Uluru and the stories that went with it. It appears that there hasn’t been any change in the rock formations over the past 100 years since records have been kept, and ask the erosion and land slides happened 10s of 1000s of years ago. We ended the day with a dinner at the base of Uluru. It wasn’t as cold as we had anticipated and it was a great way to end it holiday.