Trip in Australia: Red Centre

img_9046But my trip to the Northern Territory did not end with the wonderful Kakadu but went on to Alice Springs with the historic Ghan train. Except for a nice stop at Catherine Gorge where passers can decide to take a tour of some hours or stay by train, there are no other stops, just desert, red land, and the ever-expanding Australian outback.

The landscape seemed almost to change, but the eye would not be hard to notice the changing color of the earth and the vegetation that changes both density and color.

Alice Springs despite its fame and the whimsical passage from here, it is a small town in the province with its deserted roads already around 8/9 pm!

Everyone comes here for one reason: the journey to the mythical and iconic Uluru and therefore considered more as a place of passage. Although there are some places of interest in the area, one should not forget the size of this country and the fact that a traveler unless he intends to stay in the country and turn it over for many months will want to give priority to other places.

Like many other travelers/tourists, I was there to see Uluru or Ayers Rock. For the sake of accuracy the tour I booked through YHA Australia, the famous Rock Tour, includes 1 night in the hostel before departure, 2 nights on camping and another night in Alice Springs, this is because the miles to do are so many When I started organizing the trip to OZ I did not imagine it was so far away from Alice Springs there are almost 500! 500 km of the true Austral bush, the real outback!

But before talking about the tour, what surprised me with friends in Italy but also with other immigrants in Sydney is that few knew what Uluru or Ayers Rock was. I almost feel the bad feeling that now is so Fashion to go to Australia or say that we want to go that who dreams of going there or worse still who is already in, really does not even know exactly which beauties encloses that country!

I would understand more if a person tells me that he is not interested in visiting the world’s largest monolith in an ancient land inhabited by aborigines rather than asking myself to ask: Uluru what? Ayers …?

However returning to us, Uluru for travelers is a very desirable destination and for some very difficult to reach, this is because it is in the exact center of Australia so many people who do not have much time to visit a country and do not have a big Budgets I have to give up.

In my Australian trip, I certainly could not miss it, so I decided to immediately put it on my itinerary!

The trip to the Red Center may be a bit long, as most of Australia’s travels away from the coast, you will find for 4-5 hours of travel to observe a landscape that will be almost unchanged, red earth, vegetation here is there, Yellowish steppe and a wonderful sky .. you will see dead animal carcasses like the dead horse on the edge of the road with birds above! The Australian desert is an austere environment that can also be cruel because nature is sometimes ruthless.

Before heading out to visit the most famous monolith in the world, our tour includes a stop at King’s Canyon, a Canyon where you can walk on really interesting trails and to Kata Tjuta, a place characterized by the singular and very suggestive rocks. My advice is to not miss these places because it’s worth not being too far between them and Uluru, indeed, from Kata Tjuta’s site you can watch it from afar.

What I most liked about Uluru was to see him at sunset and at dawn though there were many other people. It’s amazing how the color of the rock and the surrounding landscape changes according to the time and the sunlight.

But another aspect concerns the visit around the monolith, if in fact Uluru seems to have a fairly linear form and a smooth structure, in fact just approached to understand how really behind the iconic rock image lies a Reality made of caves, of rocks where sometimes water slips, and the unexpected vegetation that stands before reminds that oasis as outside it, there is only the arid and sour Australian outback.

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