On any other inhabited continent, Uluru (Ayres Rock) and Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) would be minor attractions. Although these rounded landforms in Australia’s “red centre” are beautifully shaped and colored, were they moved to America’s Southwest they’d probably be lost among that region’s abundance of fantastically shaped monoliths and precipitous red-rock canyons.
But in Australia, they’re nowhere near lost. Instead, they erupt from a flat, featureless plain, so suddenly and exuberantly that the eyes of anybody coming upon them are riveted to them. And they repay people’s fascination: Uluru, towering 1,114 feet above the desert, is a sandstone rock (in fact, the largest rock in the world) that changes color throughout the day – from pink to orange, to vermilion, to blood red, to purple. Visitors often plunk themselves down for hours under umbrellas or canopies, wine or beer in hand, to watch go through its transformations.
Geologically speaking, Uluru is the exposed stump of a vast miles-long reef of rock buried under the earth. Like Mauna Loa in Hawaii, whose first three miles of height are hidden under the ocean, there is far more to Uluru than meets the eye.
Kata Tjuta (the Olgas), about 18 west of Uluru, is a clump of rounded peaks, reddish sedimentary domes that rise almost 2,000 feet in spots above the plain. Like Uluru, Kata Tjuta changes color through the day, ranging from an almost washed-out pink at midday to near-purple at sunset.
With nothing on the horizon to distract the eye or lessen their impact, it’s easy to see why Uluru and Kata Tjuta are internationally famous. But just as interesting is how far people come to see them. The national park that contains them is extremely remote – at least 900 miles from any major Australian city, while Australia itself is thousands of miles distant from Europe and North America. Fortunately, Quantas operates direct flights to the airport at Ayres Rock Resort from Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Cairns.
Still, most visitors prefer to reach Uluru by way of Alice Springs, 189 miles northeast of the park, a town of 20,000 that’s the most isolated big settlement in the country. Located at the exact center of Australia, hundreds of miles from the country’s coasts or any other sizable city, “Alice” is itself a place you have to really want to get to.
Fortunately, there are comfortable ways to reach the town and then travel on to Uluru. Besides regularly scheduled commercial air flights to Alice from the big metro areas, the most romantic way to get there is on The Ghan, the legendary train line that plies the 950 miles north from Adelaide. “Ghan” is short for Afghanistan (Aussies like to shorten almost every proper noun they encounter), a reference and a tribute to the Afghani camel drivers who helped open Australia’s interior to exploration and settlement in the 19th century.
(The Ghan used to terminate at Alice Springs, but the recent completion of a northern link to Darwin on Australia’s tropical north coast means travelers can now cross the continent north-south for the first time ever by rail.)
The train takes 20 hours to make the trip over the Outback, clacking over a spinifex-clad terrain of red sand and rock that gradually rises to the desiccated uplands of the MacDonnell Ranges -- eroded remnants of mountains that hundreds of millions of year ago soared three miles high at the heart of the continent. Of course passengers enjoy every amenity – a gourmet-level dining car, air conditioning, comfortable seats and the company of excited fellow travelers, some of whom have come all the way from Europe or North America to see Uluru.
In Alice, visitors can hop a shuttle plane, board a tour bus or rent a car to cover the final distance to Uluru. Once they arrive at the park, they can camp out in a RV park or stay at Ayers Rock Resort, a speck of sybaritic indulgence in the Outback’s great 2-million-square-mile ocean of land.
Uluru and Kata Tjuta are important spiritual centers for local aboriginal tribes, which retain legal ownership of the great stone formations. The Aborigines, who can be a phlegmatic people, respectfully request that tourists not climb Uluru for its great view of the red centre, but offer no objections to those who do. If anything, the tension between those who see Uluru as a locus of spiritual power to be revered and untrod, and those who see it as one of earth’s most beautiful ascents is emblematic of Australia’s complex social tensions, created by the competing traditions of ancient natives, 18th-century European conquerors and 20th-century Asian immigrants.
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