Busy Camping: Yulara and Uluru

From Chambers, we made the trek back out to the highway. It took a while, but nothing too difficult. From there, it was about 3 hours on bitumen to get to Yulara. Long distances out there!

Glenn had been following another family’s blog who were basically doing a similar thing to us. They were a couple from Qld, 2 young kids, a Camprite camper, and 6 months off. They were going a similar way to us at the start, and we’d hope to catch up with them at some stage, but they were a month or two ahead. As it happened, they came up the Great Central Road, visited Uluru, and then headed to Alice. If we had not delayed in Alice for a few days, it was likely we would have met them in the bush and even camped with them.

Instead, driving down the Stuart Highway towards the Uluru turnoff, we spotted each other as we passed. It was a quick jump on the UHF and about a 40 second chat before we got out of range. Strange how things work out, huge country, different travels, yet we still crossed paths.

The contrasts in the type of camping we do at times could not have been more stark than now. We had been 2 days out at Chambers Pillar, with effectively no-one else directly around us, peace and quiet, lovely. Compare that to what we had just rolled into at Yulara, the tourist village near Uluru.

We were given a site, which at first glance we wondered how we would even setup the girls table in the space provided, let alone park the car and camper. We ended up slotting ourselves in and started cooking dinner. 20 minutes later, 3 cars turned up, 12 international tourists poured out, 6 tents and a couple of rooftopers were erected, and the party began. Whoooohooo.

From a private bush setting to camp city

We did the tourist thing the next day. Went out to the rock, did some walks around the base to look at the caves, gorges, and rockfaces, drove around it, and then headed back to camp. A bit of rest and relaxation for all, pre-cooked dinner, and then took it out to see the sunset on the rock.

We felt pretty organised eating our dinner, sipping on drinks, and watching Uluru change colour. It was a lovely view, and special for the kids to see. Hopefully they remember, but if not, the photo’s will tell the story.