Travelers' tip: The Northern Territory (Yulara) has its own time zone and it doesn't use daylight savings time. In winter (April-October), it is half an hour behind New South Wales (Sydney). In summer (October-April), it is an hour and a half behind New South Wales (Sydney).
This photo was taken out the airplane window. The rock formation is known as the Olgas. The aboriginal name is "Kata-Tjuta". It's about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Ayers Rock and is located inside the same sprawling national park.
The right half of the building was our cabin. It supposedly slept six (one double bed and four bunk beds), but I think six would have been incredibly tight. It was quite good for two, though.This picture also shows our car. I arranged for a compact car, but Thrifty had a logistical problem and had to arrange for us to get a 4WD car from Avis. Yes, it's a right-side drive, and, yes, it's larger than I'm accustomed to driving. But I think I managed pretty well despite those challenges. It really helped that there was zero traffic on the outback roads.
All the comforts of home. There wasn't much television reception though.Travelers' tip: Buy salt and pepper! You forget those little things when you're camping...
Shared facilities. This being a campground, I expected the showers to be pretty unpleasant. I was surprised by how nice they were. Excellent water pressure and plenty of hot water. And clean!It gets very cold in the outback at night. The daytime temperatures probably reached into the seventies, but the nighttime was near freezing (below forty, I suspect). It made for a couple nippy trips to the loo at 2am!
