2019 Australia Trip - Day 12

Today is Evan’s 14th birthday!! We were picked up from our hotel really early in the morning, started 6 and 1/2 hours tour bus ride back to Ayers Rock. The tour guide Jordan happens to be Rita’s boyfriend, and had learned about Evan’s birthday from Rita. So he suggested everyone on the bus to sing happy birthday song to Evan in everyone’s native language. There were people from at least 5 countries represented on the bus, so the song was sung in French, Chinese, English, Dutch, Swiss German. How awesome is that!!

We arrived at our hotel before noon. The big celebration of Evan’s day has just begun.

After a nice lunch at the town square, we joined the camel tour.

When we arrived at the camel farm, we saw a line of camels arranged in a perfect line, sitting quietly and patiently for us. Evan and I rode a camel called Hugo, Steve’s camel is called Buddy (nick name is psycho! He is the only camel that has to wear a mouth guard). It was a bit startling when the camel first stood up, because it’s so tall. But we soon got very comfortable riding it because it walked so calmly and slowly. Our tour guide walked alongside of us, taught us a lot of fun facts alit camels. Do you know Australia has the biggest wild camel population in the world? Australia camels also maintained some good qualities through the years, that the Arab camels had lost, so the Arab countries actually import camels from Australia sometimes.

The most exciting events are coming up!!

Tonight, there were 4 events planned with Ayers Rock Resort - Night of Field of lights program:

1) We had drinks (Steve had several glasses of champagne; Evan and I had soft drinks) and hors d’oeuvres with sunset over Uluru rock

2) We had 3 course meal with fantastic Australian food. Our table mate told the event organizer about Evan’s birthday, so everyone there (about 80 people) sung happy birthday to him. Evan was so embarrassed. LOL!

3) They turned all lights off, so we were engulfed by darkness and silence. Then an Astronomer came out, gave us a fun talk about Southern Hemisphere stars and constellations

4) A walk through the Field of Lights! There is no words to describe how cool this art installation is, so I will just give you some facts:
- the artwork is made up of 300,000 individual components
- over 380 km of optical fibers is used
- 50,000 individual handcrafted delicate lights stems covering an area of over 49,000 square meters, equivalent to over 7 football fields

Standing in the darkness, looking up, you see thousands of brilliant stars twinkling; look down, you see a field of lights stretching to the horizon! The lights change color every 6 to 12 seconds, seems to have a life of its own.

The time seems to be frozen as you lose yourself in the awesomeness of the perfect conversion of nature and art, and the truth of “forever and always” creates a sense connection between the ourselves and something larger than life. This is one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had!

This concludes our time at Outback, since we are leaving for Sydney tomorrow.Read more