Those who know me may think of me as cynical old man who will happily find a fault in even the best laid plan. They may also think that I am hard to impress and will take any opportunity to criticise. In essence, I am a grumpy old man and I have to say that there is some truth to it.

There are but a few sights that I can honestly say I have been left wholly and most profoundly speechless by. I struggle to remember times that I have felt truly humbled. There are only a handful of moments that I have felt tears swell up in my eyes for reasons other than sadness. The first time I held my sister’s son in my arms, unwrapping my 25^th birthday present from my brother, standing beside my parents under Canterbury Cathedral on my graduation, sitting with my best man in Bwadalabougo and of course, placing a gold ring on my bride’s finger are the pick of those moments. There is now another one to add to that list: Uluru.

We almost did not see Uluru (Ayers Rock). We, as so many do, nearly avoided it for being the most typical of tourist cliché destinations. Happily, we did drive the 500 kilometre detour to see it. No spoken language has the vocabulary, no photographer has the expertise and no writer has the talent to capture the sheer magnificence of Uluru. The reason is perfectly simple, Uluru is so overwhelmingly disarming that it strips you bare, it’s ochre bulk holds your gaze while your entire body turns to a pile of wobbly, glutinous jelly. When I first saw Uluru, my spine tingled as though a column of ferocious army ants were marching up my vertebrae, my heart beat raced as though I was on the 23^rd mile of a marathon, my lungs felt as though I was breathing through a straw and my eyes and the rock were as inseparable as two powerful magnets.

I have no faith in theology and I lack the learning of geological matters. There are religious explanations and there are scientific ones behind nature’s wonders. I’ll let those debates carry on in the background while I sit on the proverbial fence. The view is much better from there anyway. Despite that, there is an overwhelming sense of spirituality that flows from Uluru and I was certainly caught in its ebb. The sight of Uluru very nearly brought tears to my eyes and I could understand why this wonderful marvel remains so important to aboriginal culture.

As I have mentioned before, the aboriginals are a beaten people who, as far as I can see, have accepted their fate. They are a nation of warriors who have lain down to die. Their last battle may very well have been clawing Ayers Rock back from the greedy clutches of the whites to reclaim it as Uluru. Despite this, the whites continue to carve a deep and ugly abrasion into the very core of their culture. Tourists continue to rub salt into the wound and persist to climb Uluru in their thousands. This is despite very clear and particularly obvious pleas not to so by aboriginals. I do not consider myself to be naive, but I honestly thought that no one in their right mind would be so blatantly disrespectful as to climb Uluru these days. Perhaps five or ten years ago this was normal, but now the message is clear. It’s in all the guidebooks, it’s in all the posters and it’s even on the ticket stud to the park: Please don’t climb Uluru. To the aboriginal, climbing Uluru is like urinating on the cross. The sight of the tourists snaking their way to the summit caught me unprepared and left me as breathless as an uppercut to the chin.

Selfishly, I hope that I’ll soon forget the bad bit and hold on to the marvellous site of Uluru and cherish it. After all, even if all I see in Australia is Uluru, then it’s well worth flying the other side of the world for.

Prior to Uluru we made good use of the 4x4 to explore the MacDonneld Ranges and bushcamped in some splendid locations.

The weather was warm and a cool breeze made it quite pleasant. The views of the ranges and some odd rock formations were terrific, especially when the glow of a sunset or sunrise highlighted the deep ochre.

Check this out: the walliby has a little 'Joey' in his pocket. His hungry too.

It would have been perfect if it were not for our constant companions. I have finally found something infinitely more irritating than a Vietnamese shopkeeper: flies. Not just one or two, but droves of them. They seem to revel in darting into the ear drum, the wet lip, the nostril, the corner of the eye or a bald head. There is no refuge. They come from nowhere and quite simply, they don’t take no for an answer. Damn their eyes.