Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock) is one of the most famous tourist sites in Australia, but because the Australian international border was closed due to COVID-19 restrictions there were no overseas tourists.  This made it EXTREMELY quiet and pleasant for us!

It took us about an hour to get there from our base at Curtin Springs Roadhouse, and we parked at the Mala Car Park – the recommended starting point for the 10km circuit walk around the rock.

Uluru is a 350m high sandstone monolith in the middle of the desert, and from a distance it looks quite uniform in shape. Up close however, it is possible to see many contours and caves. There is also rock art, a waterhole, and quite a bit of greenery. It is a sacred site for the indigenous Anangu people.

We started our day by doing the Mala Walk (2km return), and then headed back to the car park for coffee before continuing to complete our circuit of the rock. The whole circuit took us about 4 hours including our packed lunch stop. An extra treat along the way was seeing a flock of hundreds of zebra finches in the waterhole area.

After the walk we drove to the ‘sunset viewing area’ – which was an absolutely massive car park with hardly any cars in it at all! (A great benefit of closed international borders…).