Day 4: Coober Pedy to Yulara

Waking up after a reasonably restful nights sleep underground, we faced the longest driving day so far, and not much to be seen on the way. Plenty of flat open plains, with the odd crazy roadhouse in the middle of nowhere.
On the way to the border, we were fascinated by what looked like a black sheet of oil covering over the red soil in some large open areas. We stopped and checked it out: turns out it was a layer of small, black rocks, perfectly distributed in a single layer over the soil. We have since spent some time trying to work out how this unusual landscape could have been formed, It didn't look like the blackness was due to fire - the rocks looked black all over.
As we crossed over the border into NT, the landscape changed into more small rolling hills, interspersed with red, sandy dunes, and rock outcrops. We were very impressed with the huge rock outcrop of Mt Connor. Unfortunately you can't get near it as it is on private land, but we thought that it was a remarkable peak in the otherwise flat landscape. It has very sharp, squared sides, which are very different to the more rounded shape of both Uluru and the domes at Kata Tjuta.
We stayed at the Voyages Desert Sails Resort, right next to Uluru for the next 3 nights, which was a fantastic chance to rest and relax by the pool, in between walks around the spectacular scenery of the area.