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November 6
Sunrise at Uluru – up at 4am, on
the bus, out to the designated sunrise area (as opposed to the other designated
sunset viewing area)
Visitor centre
Walk to some of the points of
interest at Uluru
Breakfast at 9.30, then day at
leisure before the “Sounds of Silence” dinner later that night. Saw an Aboriginal story teller and
artists at the resort, vegged by the pool.
I loved watching the paintings by
the artists develop dot by dot – over the course of an hour they could take a
blank piece of canvas, and turn it into a story.
Around 6pm we were collected from
the hotel (along with a bus load of our closest friends) to go to our dinner
site in the desert.
Greeted with a glass of champagne
and canapés, the orange sun clipping the horizon next to Kata Tjuta on one
side, and Uluru on another side, I could tell this was going to be a special
evening.
As the sunset we were served
pumpkin soup along with some more wine before the buffet dinner.
Barramundi fish, lamb, lots of
veggies, salads, I even tried the (chewy) kangaroo.
Desert.
That, however, was not the highlight
of the evening. For me, it was
when the guided star talk started, although some of us were way ahead of the
speaker. Jumping up to move away
from the dim lights of the table lamp to gaze at the sky naked eye or with
binoculars. As the sky darkened,
the Magellanic clouds popped into view.
Crux was not yet visible, and would not rise until pre-dawn. In my 10x50 binoculars the Small
Magellanic Cloud was joined, in the same field of view, by 47 Tucana, a wondrous
globular cluster.
One could indeed mistake the
Magellanic clouds for the “regular” kind.
These satellite galaxies of our Milky Way do indeed look like high fuzzy
blobby clouds – although they don’t move if you watch them ;) One can see the Great Andromeda Galaxy
from the northern hemisphere as a naked eye object from dark skies. However, it is relatively small, just a
small tiny smudge. In comparison,
the Magellanic clouds dare you to
miss them.
47 Tuc was also the object in the
telescope that the star talker provided – truly an astonishing globular
cluster; the multitude of millions
of stars balled up tightly in the middle, spreading outwards filling the field
of view of the eyepiece.
Mum seems to be having a good
time so far – she’s talking to the other folks, and I’ve frequently heard her
laughing. Notably last night as
the large lady bug type creatures who shared our table proceeded to move a
package of butter.
