Kata Tjuta – Many Heads

No such moral dilemma today. The signs just tell you not to climb but they are really superfluous. The domes of the Olgas are higher than Uluru and come to ground level with sheer cliffs a hundred metres high. No chance of a climb there.

While you might assume the rocks have the same geological construction, these domes are actually quite different from Uluru. Uluru is relatively fine-grained sandstone – not as fine as you would find on a beach, but only as large as you might find aquarium pebbles. Kata Tjuta is much different. Clearly “sandstone” but the grains are variable in size and sometimes as large as a bucket or more. The same red-brown colour though. Notably absent in any of the descriptive signs though was any information about the geology, preferring to focus on the indigenous stories of the site.

Anybody would think we had run the kids ragged yesterday. Today was an even slower start, and Elliot, keen as always to do the whole walk, when faced with the option at the lunch stop, chose to go back again via the shorter route. In the morning, such as it was, we did the Valley of the Winds walk, as far as the lookouts.  Piles of rocks, flowering plants and birds were the order of the day.

In the afternoon it was off to do the gorge walk. However, nobody bothered to ask whether anybody was going to do it. Since I had driven there, I had expended the effort and so was not going to be denied. I had no walking companions though, apart from the general throng. Luckily for me, one of those walking companion families had two lovely girls plying anybody at the end with jelly dinosaurs!

The drive home in the  mid-afternoon saw us pass the most westerly point on our journey, some 2200km from home according to the GPS. From this point on we head homewards over the next 10 days or so.