I couldn’t take my eyes off the dingo. Seated beneath the stars in a dusty red expanse of Australian outback, one crowded now with luxuriously furnished dining tables, I was also finding it difficult to focus on the dinner conversation.
“I don’t imagine you see much Aussie Rules football in the states,” said the gentleman from Melbourne, seated to my left.
“No,” I said, doing my best to look at him and not the knee-high wild red dog standing just a few feet behind him. “But I always get a kick out of watching it here in Australia.”
There were nine of us at the table, including a trio traveling by camper van from Melbourne and visitors from both Canada and the U.K. That evening’s Sounds of Silence dinner, a long-running experience put on by Ayers Rock Resort, seemed to be an occasion everyone was looking forward to, but I think the appearance of a female dingo was most fascinating to me — the only diner at our table who had previously never seen one in the wild.
We learned earlier that this particular dingo had been named Savannah by the Sounds of Silence serving staff, who figured she was likely now about 9 months old. She had first visited the dinner site with three other 2-month old dingo puppies but was the only one who continued to return, according to our waitress.
Obviously a clever creature, but not fond of people getting too close, Savannah didn’t seem to mind the many photos I took of her. She wasn’t a big fan of my camera’s flash, however. We were also warned explicitly not to feed her and to be sure to keep an eye on purses or camera bags, as she had made off with a few of them in the past when folks weren’t paying attention.
And while the chance to photograph a wild dingo up close at dinner proved to be an incredible bonus for me, the regularly scheduled Sounds of Silence itinerary was certainly terrific, beginning with appetizers and champagne while watching the setting sun light up Uluru, or Ayers Rock, from a gorgeous overlook.
From there, it was a short trip down to the prepared dinner site, where we were greeted with a lively Aboriginal cultural performance and treated to a tasty selection of Australian wines. After some more starters, dinner was a buffet-style feast loaded with bush tucker-inspired cuisine (or bushfood), including a chance to sample kangaroo, barramundi fish and crocodile.
The meal wrapped up with a delicious dessert, and the evening’s finale was a mesmerizing star show, led by a charismatic expert, who not only pointed out a range of reasonably nearby planets in the dazzling outback sky, along with several more distant galaxies, but also wove in long-told Aboriginal stories about the heavens. And the night ended on a high note as every diner had a chance to take an up-close look at Jupiter through a high-powered telescope.
The Sounds of Silence experience runs about $195 for adults and $96 for children ages 10 to 15.
The Details
Ayers Rock Resortwww.ayersrockresort.com.au
