Kata Tjuta (The Olgas), Australia

Driving towards Kata Tjuta, a WOW view from the front seat

I have been to Australia many times, but like most visitors (and Australians) always around the coast, in cities, or even in Tasmania, and never in the dry red centre! But I always wanted to come here. Maybe it is because the desert and big red rocks is what I always saw in the geography books we used in school when I was a child (books which dedicated very few pages to this continent, btw). The other pictures were of Kangaroos.

Or maybe because I was "impressed" early in life by the book A town like Alice (funny enough in Italian the word town was translated as città, so I kept saying A city like Alice, infuriating my husband who kept correcting me).



Anyway, I always dreamed to visit the outback. And one of the most spectacular thing I saw was Kata Tjuta, almost as impressive as Uluru (next post, for sure!!!). Kata Tjuta has 36 domes and covers 35 square kilometres, the highest dome is Mt Olga (1066 above sea level, 546 above the plain). Among these 36 big rocks I felt like a figurine form a nativity set, or a toy soldier in a gigantic canyon.












But the thing that I liked more was to see the colours! Kata Tjuta doesn't have a permanent water hole, but several holes fill with rain water, and in the last two years there has been more rain than usual in the desert, so the plants where green and lush! And the little water that you could see felt so precious, and just look at this reflection below!

It was late afternoon and cloudy, but every now and then the sun would come out from behind a cloud and give the rocks a beautiful red glow.

Now, I know that you cannot see them, and in moments like these I really wish I had a good camera with a mega zoom... but behind those bushes we saw two big kangaroos! I have seen many types of wallaby and small kangaroo before in the wild, but never the big ones! It was trilling! They stayed far away from us, hiding, and looked almost as red as the rocks!

It got close to sunset time, so we moved "into position" to take a good sunset picture. There were so many clouds in the sky by then that I wasn't sure of what we would see, but even then in the course of 5 -10 minutes the colour of the rocks and surrounding area changed magically in front of our eyes! Here is the grand finale: a set of three consecutive Kata Tjuta sunset pictures.

Photos: Alessandra  Zecchini  ©