Our alarm was set for 5 am, to wake us for our 5. 45 am pick up for our Uluru sunrise tour and base walk, but it really wasn’t needed. Knowing we had an early start I was pretty much awake nearly every hour, on the hour, so that I gave up trying to get back to sleep at around 4 am.

Our lovely guide, Miguel, picked us up at 5:45 am and he asked us to call him ‘Aussie Mick’. He was a tall and rather handsome Italian though and we were fortunate to have the beautiful lilt of his Italian accent as he guided us through the day.

Uluṟu is roughly 9 km in circumference but the base walk covers a distance of 12 km as the path deviates away from some areas of the rock to protect the more sacred of the indigenous sites.

We made a few stops along the way but paused for longer periods at the 4 km point for breakfast and then at around the 8 km mark as well.

One of the most magical parts of the day, and as it turns out the whole time in Uluṟu, was stopping, right in front of the rock, as the sun rose and to watch it be increasingly bathed in the most amazing deep rich orange glow. It was amazing and worth the early rise just for this!!!

I got chatting to one lady along the way and she turned out to be from Maroubra, just a suburb away from us, and happened to be the partner of one of the members of Human Nature who had performed near our resort the night before. I have been a bit annoyed that we hadn’t been aware that Human Nature we’re going to be giving a concert in the area, but as it turns out, it was a private event for those participants who were part of the ‘imagine’ holiday group so we wouldn’t have been able to attend anyway. At least it was good to clear that up though!

It was quite strange to then venture on to the area with the old path that climbers used to take, as I was one of these back in the late 70s. So long ago!

The tour work finished up at around midday and we headed back to the hotel to rest because we had another tour pick up scheduled for 5 pm. This one was for a sunset dinner tour back out the rock.

Our Uluru sunset and BBQ dinner tour was a very pleasant event and made more so by the fact that we met this lovely young man, Ted, whilst we were waiting to board the bus. We ended up chatting with him through the evening, and then sitting with him at dinner, and he was a most interesting young man who, fortunately, shared our displeasure thought the previous president of the United States. He was out in Australia on a short two week holiday but was going to be heading to Melbourne to visit the set of Moulin Rouge because he had recently joined as an artistic director for Moulin Rouge in Manhattan. Mark and Ted exchanged contact details and he told us to reach out if we are ever back in NYC and he will help up with tickets to see a Broadway show.

We didn’t get back to our hotel room until almost 10 pm which was a tad concerning because we had a 4:45 am start the next day.