Visit to The Red Center
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After Caines, I flew to Alice Springs in the "outback".  This area is called the Red Center because of the red sandy soil (red due to iron oxide) and the fact that it is near the center of Australia (in Northern Territory).  After visiting some historic buildings and aboriginal art stores, I take a two day tour to Uluru (previously known as Ayer's Rock) and Kata Tjuta (previously The Olgas).  These areas were returned to the aboriginal a few years ago after a compromise where they agreed  to lease them back to the national park for 99 years.  Being owners however, give them significant input into the management.  The aboriginal names are now commonly used rather than the names given the rocks by Europeans. 

We drive through nearly 400 km of desert on the way to Uluru, although this year it is very unusually green.  Last year they had over four times the normal rainfall (a record) and this year in the first 2 1/2 months they have already received their normal rainfall for the entire year.  So even at the end of the summer all is green.  "Dry" lakes have water this year.  They had to cancel the annual race on the river that runs through Alice Springs because they use wheeled vehicles and this year the river has water.

The primary means of travel and shipping across the region until about 1950 was camels.  Afghanistani camel drivers brought camels to the area in the mid-1800's and provided most of the transport.  We stopped by a camel farm on the way to Uluru.
After a long ride in the bus we finally get our first view of Uluru (Ayer's Rock).
Some visitors still climb the rock.  The aboriginal owners agreed to allow this although they discourage it.  To them Uluru is a very sacred place.  They still use caves and structures of the rock for religious ceremonies and certain men climb it once a year for a special ritual, but most of their traditions are only shared with specific parts of the tribe (some are known only by old men who pass it on to their oldest sons before they die, other traditions are only known  by women who pass it on to their daughters, etc.).  Most of the traditions cannot be passed to anyone outside the tribe and so little is known or can be explained to visitors.

But before we visit the rock we set up our camp and have lunch.  The tour company has a permanent camp with tents and a small metal building for dining.
None of the group chose to climb Uluru and so we can visit it in the afternoon (they close the climb whenever the temperature will go above 37 degrees celcius (about 99 degrees F) within two hours, so it is often open from 1/2hr before dawn to only 8AM and never open if the rock is wet).  You can see the path taken to climb along the middle of the slope on the right.  Some parts are so steep that they have heavy chain permanently placed that can be used to hold on to. 
I choose not to climb the rock but to walk the 8 km trail around the rock.  This took us about 2 hr in the heat.  Fortunately there was a place to refill our water bottles half way around. It is amazing how many different vistas the rock offers.  It takes on a different character from each direction as one walks around the rock.
The aboriginals see images to illustrate their legends in the features and textures of the rock.  Unfortunately they will not share most of these.
Sunset is a special time at the rock.  The setting sun creates a changing pattern of colors on the rock.  Unfortunately a storm rolled it just minutes before sunset and we had to rush to the bus from our viewing area to avoid getting soaked.  There were no colors that evening.  But we got up at 5 AM the next morning, leaving the camp by 6 to view the sunrise from a spot between Uluru and Kata Tjuta.  This allowed us to watch the sun rise behind Uluru and the changing colors on Kata Tjuta.
After watching the sun rise we drive on to Kata Tjuta.  The highest point on Kata Tjuta is a few feet higher than Uluru but, as you can see, it has much deeper cuts eroded between nearly separated domes.  The strata are at a modest angle, compared to Uluru where the strata are at nearly 80 degrees from the horizontal (Uluru remains a highly buckled part of a former strata layer). 
We "bush walk" along a trail between two domes along the other side and then back through another cut. In the box canyon below the nearly parallel rock walls echoed the sounds of the birds nesting in the holes on the left, creating a nearly continuous reverberation.
The sandstone of Kata Tjuta is very different from the fine grained stone of Uluru.  In Kata Tjuta it is made from very large round granite stones cemented together.  The stones varied from baseball to basketball sized.  The area went through two phases of rock building.  An early phase of mountain development created the granite.  These mountains eroded and formed sediment in shallow seas that covered this area.  That area was buckled and uplifted and then all but these two (plus one other called Mt Conan about 50 km east) eroded away.