Everyone should experience the Northern Territory at least once in their lifetime. Photo / Tourism NT
Uluru and the land that surrounds Australia’s most iconic landmark fascinates us all – and for good reason. Everyone should experience the Northern Territory at least once in their lifetime, writes Helen Van Berkel
For such a vast, featureless place, Australia’s Northern Territory is far from featureless. In fact, it’s far from anything: the red heart of Australia is about 1200km from the nearest ocean, about a two-hour flight from the nearest big city and it’s believed to be the land mass that emerged from the sea the longest time ago.
It is a desert that is bursting with vibrant life and colour, split by rivers and gorges, pocked by meteors, brimming with art and history and humanity – and home to rocks and landforms that have mystified and inspired since the dawn of time.
READ MORE: What’s new in Australia’s Northern Territory?
We start our journey in Yulara, flying into the tiny Ayers Rock Airport from Sydney. Even before the plane lands, the pilot is stoking excitement for the vast land below: pointing to shining expanses of water in Lake Amadeus. It is usually a dry salt pan but recent rain has given it a watery depth of a few centimetres. The shallow lake is all that remains of a vast sea that about 500 million years ago squashed eroded sand and mud into what the first humans to see it called Uluru.
The rock is a compelling sight: it emerges from the plain like a great red Hasselback potato, visible from miles around – including my hotel room at the Desert Gardens. I can understand why Uluru is a sacred place to Aboriginal people and why it hurt the local Anangu people so much that tourists clambered up its sides for so many years. About 30 people died climbing the rock before it was closed in 2019 to such indignities; a time still referred to by the Anangu as the “sorry business”.
My next view of Uluru is from Tali Wiru, an open-air restaurant from which we watch the setting sun paint Uluru in darkening shades of gold and red, to purple and finally black as it is swallowed by the darkness.
We pull up to Tali Wiru to the sound of a didgeridoo, the red dust of the dune pluming around our sandaled feet.
Tali Wiru is Voyages Indigenous Tourism Australia’s premium indigenous dining experience. We were among only 20 guests, selecting canapes from trays held out by circling waiters before sitting down for the main course. By the time we finish dessert, the glory of the southern stars have burst into a streak of light above us. Our hosts educate us with stories of how the Aboriginal people saw and interpreted the stars. Interestingly, the First Peoples identified the same constellations that everyone else saw: the Pleiades are the Mulayndynang in the Wiradjuri tradition; and the Tjilulpuna is a large constellation that tells a story about fishermen paddling a canoe along the Milky Way.
But what blows my mind is the Emu, which isn’t a constellation at all but the space between stars: its head is the Coalsack Nebula, its body black clouds along the Milky Way: how humbling is it to think that where some saw pictures among the stars, others saw pictures in the spaces.
Uluru reappears again in the early morning sunshine when we drive around the rock, seeing its near-vertical strata and the erosion that has bitten great slabs from its sides. Although, we don’t get to see most of the rock at all. The 320-odd metres above ground is the tip of a berg of stone that extends about 2.5km into the ground. It was tipped up by an orogeny: basically Uluru was squeezed out of the ground like a giant bubble when tectonic plates collided. Locals toss out the word “orogeny” with cheerful abandon; the Anangu stories tell of a battle between the Kuniya python woman and venomous brown snakes that left the black streaks on Uluru’s flanks, their bites leaving deep, eroded indentations in the rock. The battle was at the Mutitjulu waterhole, the only permanent source of fresh water at Uluru.
As I stand in the morning coolness on the edge of the waterhole, I am aware that for 60,000 years people have stood where I stood, to drink, to bathe, to rest, to play, to pass by and to marvel.
West of Uluru is Kata Tjutu, a smaller but more rounded formation formed by similar geologic processes. And to the east is Mt Connor, a flat-topped mesa-like hulk that we pass on our way to Alice Springs. So many people mistake it for Uluru that the local wags call it “Fooluru”.
And finally we arrived in Alice Springs.
The centre of the Northern Territory with a population of about 25,000. . It was set up as a station on the first telegraph line that crossed the country and named for a spring that did not exist. What those early explorers thought was a spring was simply a waterhole. But the name stuck. Alice existed too: she was the wife of Sir Charles Todd, the superintendent of the Overland Telegraph line.
Now it’s a stop on the Ghan that crosses Australia from north to south and the administrative centre of the Northern Territory and base from which to explore the mysteries and natural wonders of the Territory.
The Arrernte people call the MacDonnell Ranges Yeperenye, aptly observing the rolling shapes of the ranges look like they have been created by giant caterpillars. On a flight with Alice Springs Helicopters, the ranges looked like great waves of rock rolling across the desert. We landed on top of a ridge, which was approached on one side by a long slope and ended with a rocky drop to the desert floor on the other side. Between the “waves”, or the caterpillar’s “humps” are beautiful gorges, often filled with water that simply must be swum in to avoid the day’s heat.
Palm Valley in the Finke Gorge National Park is, mysteriously, filled with the eponymous trees. Access to the valley is via 4WD only and our guide John Stafford of Alice Springs Expeditions negotiates the track – essentially a dried-up riverbed - in a hefty 4WD, a trailer containing our lunch and swags for an overnight campout bumping behind us. The mysterious part here is how the palms got to the valley.
The nearest trees of the same species are 1000 kilometres away. There’s no river around that could have brought seeds here, nor evidence that birds may have taken them. They are an incongruous pocket of vibrant green, a verdant valley among the walls of red rocks in the gorge.
The rockshow continued at Rodna, where we camped for the night. We set up our swags on the banks of the Finke River while Stafford magicked up a restaurant-quality dinner. We dined like royalty as an open fire kicked up sparks that were no competition to the smear of the Milky Way overhead.
Only a few minutes walk into the river gorge are the Glen Helen Organ Pipes, great vertical ribs of red stone that emerge from the surrounding hillsides like the plates of a stegosaurus.
It was here that we went rogue.
The plan was to drive for about an hour and a half from Rodna around the Macs to the Ormiston Gorge. But when we realised we could walk up the mostly dry bed of the Finke River and swim across the gorge in about the same time it would take Stafford and his car to drive around, we knew the swim was the option for us.
The unscripted adventure took us up the riverbed, across it to take a closer look at the Organ Pipes and back again to the shade of riverside trees. The water level in the gorge was unexpectedly high but in the Anzac spirit we wrapped our clothes in plastic bags and plunged in. I have no idea how deep the water was and was relying on assurances from our local guide that crocodiles were not found this far south. That crossing was one of the most exhilarating swims of my life.
The towering red cliffs of the gorges, acres of tiny white and yellow desert flowers, the undulating humps of Yeperenye: the landscapes of the Outback have inspired artists from the beginning of time. Aboriginal artists scratched their observations in petroglyphs at accessible sites such as N’Dhala Gorge. We create our own works with Art Tours of Australia, pointing our impressions of Simpsons Gap in the ranges. Our attempts are pretty primitive – but downright embarrassing when seen against the art on display at Desert Mob.
One of Australia’s oldest art festivals, Desert Mob at Alice Springs’ Araluen Arts Centre brings together work from 30 art centres throughout the Northern Territory. It’s an incredible showcase of talent from indigenous artists, from the familiar dot paintings, to ceramics, to weaving, to watercolour. It is held annually and well worth making a special trip for.
We drive past a memorial to one of Australia’s most revered artists, Albert Namatjira, on our way to Hermannsburg, the Lutheran Village where the great Namatjira was born. The historic precinct of whitewashed buildings is the remains of a mission that managed to build good relationships with the local indigenous communities. And they make the best scones in the Northern Territory.
Everything is big in Australia’s Northern Territory. From the oversized mining machinery that kept our speed down on the A4 between Uluru and Alice Springs, to the cattle stations we pass through – Mt Conner is on the 405,000ha (one million acre) Curtin Springs cattle station - to the vast blue dome of the sky stretching overhead, to the distances: it’s 400km between Uluru and Alice Springs, the nearest main centre.
Our accommodation for the night was the much cosier – only 240ha – Ooraminna Station Homestead. Carved out from a once-much-larger station, Ooraminna gave us the choice of four luxury private cabins to spend the night in, each carefully set apart from each other for privacy. Mine was the Tin Cabin, where I slept like one of the logs that made up the four-poster bed.
We explored the station’s film set – popular for weddings – built like an old-time outback town, complete with pub and the iconic red-vaned windmill popularised in just about every movie set in the outback.
As we watched from a rocky escarpment on the station, the setting sun bathed the countryside in shades of gold and red and its extraordinary features darkened to shadow and disappeared into the night.
GETTING THERE
Air NZ, Qantas and Jetstar all fly direct from Auckland to Sydney International Airport. Alice Springs is a three-and-a-half-hour flight from Sydney’s domestic terminal.
Uluru is just shy of 5 hours by car from Alice Springs. You can also fly into Yulara, Ayers Rock Airport from Sydney.
DETAILS
From skipping the queues to planning your parade spot, here's all you need to know.