Sunrise last day, home tonight

Early start to check out the sunrise at the rock.  Pretty chilly but worth the effort.  Sadly the last look at this most iconic symbol of the Australian red centre.  At the airport now waiting for our flights, rather than Uluru to Brisbane as planned (flight cancelled!!) we have to go Uluru - Melbourne - Brisbane.  We'll land in Brisbane at about 8pm.

The saga continues......the plane was 40 minutes late getting in to Uluru and 40 minutes late getting in to Melbourne.  That gave us 15 minutes to disembark, then 25 minutes to collect our luggage.  On the dot of 24 minutes our bags finally came out, we had to bag drop 40 minutes before the flight, we had our luggage on the ramp on time, as we scanned our boarding pass it clicked over to 39 minutes and it rejected our luggage, went to service desk, lots of shaking of heads and shrugging of shoulders, we're bumped to the 8.55pm flight, given seats apart, fixed that, given $8 refreshment vouchers, can't use them for alcohol, flight is now delayed an hour, due in Brisbane at midnight.  Eventually got home and to bed at 2.30am....long day!!!

Just before sunrise

Sun touches the rock

Kata Tjuta in the background getting a bit of the early sunshine

The lonely old tarmac

Finally!!!

Yulara with Kata Tjuta in the distance

One last look

One last look....promise

Weather has been great, one cloudy day and the rest have been glorious sunny days, a little warm in the north, a little chilly in the south but not a complaint to be had.

We'd make a few changes to the trip if we ever did it again but we've not been too busy, not too lazy, just a nice relaxing holiday despite travelling 4980 kilometres.  We spent $900 on fuel (diesel), the dearest being $2.90/litre at Pine Creek.

The roads are very very good, wide and well maintaned, no problems with any traffic.  Hundreds of caravans all doing 90km/h in the 130km/h zone, the only saving grace is most roads are so straight and wide we have no trouble getting around them.

There haven't been any crowds we've been; staff at Uluru tell us they are about 65% capacity with June and July getting up to peak performance.

The tourist parks and attractions are in excellent condition, well laid out, information signs all over the place explaining the history of the people and places. There were (mostly) easy to follow established paths.  All the staff in every town, motel, park and pub have been super friendly and welcoming.  Plenty of backpackers from around the world.