Water formation on the top of Uluru Rock (Ayers Rock)
Yulara is the only service village nearby, built to offer supplies and accommodation for visitors to the park.
Uluru is one of Australia's best known natural features, the long domed rock having achieved iconic status as one of the symbols of the continent. The rock is a so-called monolith, i.e. a single piece of rock or a giant boulder, extending about 5 km beneath the desert plain and measuring 3.6 by 2.4 km at the surface. It rises 348 metres above the plain (862.5 metres above sea level) and has a circumference of 9.4 km. Some say that Uluru is the biggest of its kind, others say that Mount Augustus in Western Australia is bigger. Whatever the case may be, standing in front of Uluru and seeing its massive bulk rise above the flat plain surrounding it, it is nothing less than impressive. The rock undergoes dramatic colour changes with its normally terracotta hue gradually changing to blue or violet at sunset to flaming red in the mornings as the sunrises behind it.
But the rock also extends some 1.5 miles underground. The Anangu Aborigines believe this space is actually hollow but it contains an energy source and marks the spot where their 'dreamtime' began. They also believe that area around Uluru is the home of their ancestors and is inhabited by many ancestral 'beings'.
Valley of the Winds, Kata Tjuta
Kata Tjuta is a collection of 36 variously-sized rock domes 36km to the west of Uluru. Some geologists believe that once it may have been a monolith far surpassing Uluru in size, but that it eroded to several separate bulks of rock.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park - updated May 2024
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Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
