Post by @cafuego@misanthrope.social

cafuego 🔭🤦🏼‍♂️

@cafuego@misanthrope.social 6 days ago

Two years ago today we went on a holiday / pilgrimage to a place we’d never been before.

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Giant letters - seen from behind - that spell the local Anangu word “PALYA”. The letters are white in front and back, but the sides are painted in indigenous art patterns.

The letters are sitting on red tiles and flat scrubby bushland is visible behind them, as well as a rising nearly full Moon. — Giant letters - seen from behind - that spell the local Anangu word “PALYA”. The letters are white in front and back, but the sides are painted in indigenous art patterns. The letters are sitting on red tiles and flat scrubby bushland is visible behind them, as well as a rising nearly full Moon.

Two bare legs stretched out on a couch, away from the camera, inside a hotel suite.

A walking path through a patch of bush (inside a resort) at sunset. Clumps of tall grass grow from deep red dust and spindly desert oaks are scattered here and there.

A row of skinny scrubby trees are silhouetted against a deep orange sunset sky. The bright dot of Venus sits just above the tree tops.

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cafuego 🔭🤦🏼‍♂️

@cafuego@misanthrope.social 5 days ago

If you hadn’t worked out yet where we went, it was to a big red rock.

Day one involved pottering around the resort, staring at the rock from a hilltop, looking at the local gallery, booking into a few tours and a night time light show (the drone show was canceled due to upper level winds) with a picnic dinner.

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A flowering orange honey grevillea with a deep red blurry Uluru behind it.

Uluru in the distance, with scrubby bushland full of desert oaks in the foreground.

Detail of a large dot painting. An up side down sulphur crested cockatoo.

The silhouette of Kata-Tjuta on the western horizon at sunset, with a sky which is deep orange on the horizon, changing via yellow and purple to deep blue higher up.

cafuego 🔭🤦🏼‍♂️

@cafuego@misanthrope.social 4 days ago

Lacking a car for the first few days, we didn’t go see any of the geology up close, but instead had other people show us around.

After being convinced by the pilot she would take care to not freak me out too badly I was terrified for a while anyway, but I think the view was worth it.

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A small helicopter owned by “Professional Helicopter Services” idling on a helipad, doors open. A ground staff person is talking to the pilot.

Glorious Uluru seen from a helicopter a few kilometers away and half a kilometer in the air. The landscape is flat as far as the eye can see (except for a single distant mesa over the horizon) and covered in scrub.

The closest part of the Rock shows a ridge where previously uluru climbs used to start (they no longer happen) and you can just see that the sandstone layers that make up the rock are nearly vertical. — Glorious Uluru seen from a helicopter a few kilometers away and half a kilometer in the air. The landscape is flat as far as the eye can see (except for a single distant mesa over the horizon) and covered in scrub. The closest part of the Rock shows a ridge where previously uluru climbs used to start (they no longer happen) and you can just see that the sandstone layers that make up the rock are nearly vertical.

A panorama of the red sandstone outcrops of Kata-Tjuta in a barren desert landscape. Some dry stream beds in the foreground run away from the rocks. The distant horizon has some hilltops on it.

cafuego 🔭🤦🏼‍♂️

@cafuego@misanthrope.social 3 days ago

Then, finally, we got to the bloody big rock as part of a sunrise tour (including breakfast on a nearby dune top) followed by walks around various parts, and stories about the history, use and meaning of various part of the site.

Sadly no wildlife, the water is still not potable because it still picks up heavy metals and human waste from items discarded and lost by people who climbed the rock in the past.

Other than that, it is absolutely mesmerising and beautiful.

No photos from most of the other sites, because those are sacred and there are signs asking no people to not photograph them.

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Walking path through savannah, heading towards Uluru. The towering bare red rock a stark contrast dwarfing the trees in front.

Mutitjulu water hole. A tranquil pond of clear water, fed from a (current) trickle coming off a cascade of rocks.

Panorama of one end of Uluru, the vertical layers in the sandstone emphasised by shadows.

Rock art near Mutitjulu water hole, two boomerangs.

cafuego 🔭🤦🏼‍♂️

@cafuego@misanthrope.social 2 days ago

The next day we picked up a hire car, so we could go and investigate Kata-Tjuta in the morning, before disappearing up the road to Curtin Springs Station. Tough farming conditions caused the owners to diversify into boutique paper making (and paper making tours, so we did that :-)

As it turns out, there is a third mountain that goes with Uluru and Kara-Tjuta and the lore about those. It’s called Atila and is within the Curtin Springs property boundary. No sealed road though.

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The rock formation of Kata-Tjuta towers on the horizon. In front is a desert oak forest, which consists of sparse spindly trees in an arid landscape dotted with spinifex grass clumps.

A sheer red wall of sandstone towers straight up. Over head, broken high cloud sits in a deep blue sky.

A painted concrete shower and toilet block at Curtin Springs. On the left is for shielas [sic], the right for blokes.

Paintings of a woman’s and man, an emu and camels decorate the front wall. — A painted concrete shower and toilet block at Curtin Springs. On the left is for shielas [sic], the right for blokes. Paintings of a woman’s and man, an emu and camels decorate the front wall.

A flat topped mesa in the distance, in an otherwise flat landscape. A dry lake sits in the foreground.

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Emma Davidson

@emmadavidson@aus.social 6 days ago

@cafuego where is this? I guess somewhere in APY lands, but what town?

cafuego 🔭🤦🏼‍♂️

@cafuego@misanthrope.social 6 days ago

@emmadavidson Not so much a town as a resort - Yulara.

Emma Davidson

@emmadavidson@aus.social 6 days ago

@cafuego aha! Been there, but in an off-road camper trailer, no hotel rooms for my kids. They still say it was one of the best family holidays ever. I had work to do with Aboriginal women in a town camp nearby during school holidays, so we made a proper trip of it.