I still remember when I was first introduced to Voyages, and to be employed at Ayers Rock Resort in the desert which the closest K-mart, Coles, etc are located 446 KM away (well, pardon my attitude since I’m such a city girl); I was really excited to be stranded yet I didn’t actually know what benefits I’d enjoy then. Now that I have finished my job, I lived my life over there, I can tell you now how grateful I am to have worked there.

WORK PLACE

I can say the company takes care of you well. Talking about staff benefit, all you have to do is to show your magic card to IGA, some shops at Town Square to get 10% discount and 20% food discount for most of the dining options.

My magic card <3

Since Voyages is a company member of Accor Hotels, you can also get Bienvenue card which enables you to get discounted room price of Accor hotels all over the world as long as you are an active employee. And if you love to eat out a lot while you work here, you might probably think about buying Accor Plus membership for AUD 399/year and you get discount on food at partnered restaurants all over the world e.g. you get 50% discount for 1 card and 2 people dine in. Oh man, some of my friends have it and damnn, you can eat good food for cheap price!

Yulara is the town exists because of Uluru and it has around 1400 residents living here and most of them work under Voyages. We are okay to blend with the guests as long as we don’t use hotels’ swimming pools. Other than that, we can play tennis at the hotel’s tennis court, we visit our workplaces as normal patrons, drink at our own bar after work or on our day off, well you know, live normally (because my previous hotel was pretty strict about this, maybe others too).

With my roommate, housemate, and our friend.
I was hired full time as F&B attendant but I could also do multihire at another department for casual rate. It’s like an extra money for you and some people can work a lot an save lotttssss of money here. Here I took a picture with my friend Haley when we did housekeeping.
I mainly worked at Walpa Bar (image courtesy of TripAdvisor)
Sometimes worked at Pira Pool Bar but this is me and Joshua as customers and Sand was serving us lol. The food was amazing.
Pretty picture of the area by Hunter and Bligh
My room. I had a nice roommate, Suryenti; and 2 lovely sharemates on the other side of building as well.

The workers live in certain designated areas and mostly live near each other. You also have semi private room and pay for $98/week and share the kitchen, toilet, and shower with another 3 people in the same share building.

Just realized I never took proper picture of residency so I had to capture this from my IG story. Crap quality but hopefully you get the idea lol.
At gym with my bestie, Sand. You can sign up the membership only for $10/week. They have cardio room, weightlifting room, swimming pool; you can do badminton, yoga, soccer, etc. The gym is located near Residents Club where you can buy takeaway alcohol, have karaoke night once a month, or simply have drinks with friends.

Another benefit that I got while I was working there was we could get free counseling. I had some serious problems (non-job problem) over there especially during my first week and the Julie helped me a lot. This benefit, I really treasured so much.

PLACE

This is such a magical place for me, red sand and dunes everywhere yet you can still see greens in bushes and trees. Uluru and Kata Tjuta are your everyday view when you go to work and the night sky there — damn, I will never forget — is the most beautiful sky in my life.

The Field of Lights (image courtesy of Northern Territory webpage).

I am ashamed to say this but I never even really visited Field Of Light. I was waiting for my other friends so we could go together but we never really did and I eventually left without seeing it. It’s such a beautiful art by Bruce Munro (you can find out more about his work here).

Our F&B manager set a free Camel sunset tour for the whole team at 2019 Christmas party. It was such a surreal experience since the weather made it so.
You can see so many wild lives here. Countless wild rabbits every night, dingos (wild dogs), so many beautiful colorful and wide variety of birds. I’ve seen small lizards to the BIG one yet I’ve never seen snake and Thorny Devil.

The weather here can be extreme. During winter, it can be very cold like below 5° in the night and during summer, it can be more than 45° in the day. I survived both, my gosh.

This summer (2019) we had quite a lot of rains and sometimes sand storm hit us. My friend Adrian took this footage.

Talking about places, my favorite is Tinka Lookout. Yulara has a few lookouts to see Uluru and Kata Tjuta but only staffs know the access to Tinka lookout. I spent a few times watching sunsets, stargazing, watching meteor shower and watching sunrise. Sorry this blogger is so lazy to work more on picture so I don’t have any good picture of night sky but guyssss, you can see the Southern Cross, countlessss stars and falling stars. It was so good sometimes it left me dazzled :'(

Music and drinks while watching sunset and stargazing, and with best friends. Perfect.
Laying down in the Sand and seeing your favorite rock.
The sunset color <3

I am grateful I lived there. I tried so many new things: I learn to drink (still don’t like it tho), I had my first tattoo (finally an art piece on my skin), I cooked and baked a lot, I did more painting and crafting in my Australia life. And I love my job a lot.

Hand-poked tattoo by my friend Paula. It shows my life lesson: go with the flow.

Talking about the job, I was grateful that they challenged me to be the real Food and BEVERAGE attendant. I’ve done floor a lot before without really knowing the beverage world. I hesitated at first of course because not only serving wine or spirits, I also had to make cocktails and mocktails. I was also challenged to do barista coffees a lot. Despite of all my doubts, my leaders and colleagues trusted me and I finally could do it.

From all Walpa signature cocktails, I loooove Bush Margarita the most. I hope Michael and Chloe enjoyed it too.

I had good coworkers from so many countries (well some stressed me out) but these people made me be more open minded about things in life; how I see and enjoy it. And more importantly, I had good leaders T^T.

With Christine on my left. She was the first youngest leader I’ve ever met. She was still 21 when I first worked there and I was so amazed about how she cared about her job and her staff, about how she dealt with problems at work. She is my inspiration.
With Neil and Rohan. They are ones of the nicest Indians I’ve met! They are funny, loyal, veryyyy kind, and helpful and supportive supervisors. They are part of my inner circle in Yulara. I worked with Rohan for a past few months and I love how he took care of us and led us even though he is so much younger than me!
With Joseph (middle). He was the one who calmed me down during my first bar opening shifts when I had so many coffee orders. I wasn’t even used to make coffees at that time! I apologized for being easily stressed out and he said something about acceptance (because you can’t really change your personality, can you?)
With Akhil, my restaurant manager, who loved to call me Ubud Monkey xD. It’s a mixed feeling toward him because he can be scary but he can be super friendly as well. During those scary moments, I kinda understand him because he had to do what he had to do as a manager. What I learned about him was even after he scolded me, he could still be professional by throwing a joke later in the same day. I think if I had to scold my staff, I would need longer time to be friendly again.
Denise is my F&B manager and she is my idol! She helped us on the floor, she kept herself humble (like professional hospitality worker although she is a boss), she can be strict and I respect her a lot that I couldn’t really joke around with her but I really loved the days when I was working alone in the bar and the bar was smashed with orders. She helped me a lot and I was like a bar boss at that time lol. I wanna be like Denise later.
Andddd, this is Prageeth, the one that I love the most!!

Prageeth is a type of leader that will have your back. He can be childish and wild but he can be damn good and strict about work rules too. He concerns a lot about good rules such as Workplace Health and Safety. I still remember I had a very small wound in my finger and he wrote a report about it and I was like “for what?” And he said ‘what if it get infected later? Report it so later you can get work compensation’. Well, i don’t exactly remember how he said, but it’s kinda that. He caught me crying a few times when I was handling bad customers with a bad mood to start with. He knew when I cried about my own problem and he really cared about my mental health. I don’t know if I will find someone like Prageeth later and I hope I can be like him in the future. He has quit and he really deserves a better life and job somewhere. Fingers crossed.

Well, you’ll get heckin bored if I continue here because people is the strongest magnet that made me love Yulara life so much. They deserve a whole blog post so stay tuned!

p.s. Head image is courtesy of Uluru Tours. For more information about Ayers Rock Resort, you guys feel free to click here.