After our crepes and champagne, we sat down to watch the sunset from these great round tables and were grouped with others whom we became instant friends with. As the sun began to set, we made our way to the buffet that had a terrific selection of local foods. As the sun began to set, something amazing happened. Since they don't have many street lights here (they don't want the light pollution to mess up the sky at night) the stars were everywhere. You could just reach up and grab the milky way. As it got darker, we heard the haunting sounds of the didgeridoo and then an astronomer came out and explained whey there was no north star in this part of the hemisphere. You had to find the southern cross to determine your direction and he showed us how. We had a great time looking at the stars and planets through telescopes they brought out for us to use and then headed back to our hotel.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Today we were picked up for our sunrise tour of Uluru with our Aboriginal tour guide from Anangu Tours. Happy Reid was our guide and she had a New Zealander translate for her. It was incredibly cold this morning in the upper 30's to low 40's (degrees Fahrenheit). We were quite underdressed for this adventure but our guide had hot coffee and tea for us and got us to the site just in time after a wonderful breakfast. It was incredible to watch the color of the rock change with time from a deep purplish red to this bright red orange glowing ball of fire! Happy showed us the various plants and things in the bush that were used for food and hunting. She also made fire and then showed us the first glue stick that was invented over thousands of years ago from dry bush flowers ground into a powder in a wooden coolamon and then heated on a wooden stick to form a black glue used to adhere quartz stones to sticks for slicing open wild game that was caught. The glue like substance is known as spinaflex and is mounted on malga wood. It basically looks like a stick with a big black ball on the end of it. When it takes two days to carve a wooden bowl with a piece of quartz it's pretty handy to have some of this to repair any cracks that come up.

We watched in amazement as people held onto a very thin chain and climbed Uluru. One misstep and you would easily fall to your death! We also saw some inch ants that are like fire ants only a lot bigger and much more aggressive when they swarm. This afternoon we must leave this lovely place and head for new adventures in Sydney at the historic Rocks, The Blue Mountains, and the Hunter Valley.