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There are a number of tour operators that leave from Alice Springs to visit:

  • Uluru (Ayers Rock)
  • Kata Tjuta (Olgas)
  • King's Canyon

There are typically split over multiple days. However the ones I've found don't allow infants. Are there any tour companies that allow travel with children under the age of one?

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  • It's possible this could be due to the incident in 1980 where a dingo stole an infant from a tent. They could even be complying with a law due to that incident. Are there tours which don't involve camping?
    – hippietrail
    Sep 1, 2013 at 2:56
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    IMO it's far more likely that any ban on infants is due to the extra hassle of catering and providing for babies on a camping trip, hence why I figure there may be some that allow infants (or do not involve camping, as you say). If it was a reaction to the Chamberlain incident children would have been banned from Fraser Island tours many times over because of the dingo attacks there.
    – dlanod
    Sep 1, 2013 at 6:11
  • It's definitely possible both ways and it's definitely a good question. But the way Australia works there are many levels of politics and resulting great variance in laws, and even more in rules which are not actual law. So Fraser Island doesn't have to have the same restrictions especially given that it hasn't had an incident on the same scale.
    – hippietrail
    Sep 1, 2013 at 9:10
  • So are you saying there are actually restrictions on these tours? That's a valid answer if true, but I haven't found any evidence of it.
    – dlanod
    Sep 1, 2013 at 9:34
  • I'm just musing that it's a possibility. I'm interested to see what the answer turns out to be.
    – hippietrail
    Sep 1, 2013 at 9:37

2 Answers 2

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+100

This tour here goes to all the mentioned places:

Discover Uluru, Kings Canyon and Alice Springs on this 3-day tour starting at Ayers Rock and ending in Alice Springs. Explore Australia's great Central Desert - watch the sunrise over Uluru (Ayers Rock), visit the magnificent Olga Gorge and Kings Canyon, with their beautiful waterholes and dazzling views. Stop off at a huge cattle station and the remote, early telegraph town of Alice Springs.

They also mention infants explicitly as being free if they do not occupy a seat (see under "schedule"), so we can strongly assume that they are allowed:

  • Child rate applies only when sharing with 2 paying adults
  • Infant are free provided they do not occupy a seat
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Uncovery has answered your actual question, but are you sure it's the right thing to be asking?

The reason those tours are all split over multiple days is that distances around the Northern Territory are long: it's a 500-km, 6-hr drive one-way from Alice Springs, and access to Kings Canyon via the only paved road adds several hundred km to the trip. If you take a tour from Alice to Kings and Uluru and back, you'll thus be spending most of those days sitting on a bus rolling ~1500km through featureless desert, trying to keep the baby on your lap happy. As a father of two, this does not sound like my idea of a good time.

I would thus recommend skipping the package tour and flying straight from Alice to Uluru, it's a short hop and the cost is pretty reasonable. Then rent a car -- prices are again surprisingly sane given the sheer remoteness of the location -- and tour on your own, Kata Tjuta is only about an hour way. We rolled our package this way when we visited a few years ago and were very happy to be able to set our own schedules and get away from the tour groups.

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  • I was wondering myself if it's the right thing to take an infant into a remote desert location.
    – uncovery
    Sep 3, 2013 at 19:35
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    Without the information that such a tour exists, we would be unable to make an informed decision on whether or not we should be taking such a tour. :)
    – dlanod
    Sep 3, 2013 at 21:20
  • @uncovery: Uluru's actually very well equipped for family travel, Yulara (the support town) has pharmacies, supermarkets, clinics and everything else you could need for a baby. My concern is the sheer tedium of sitting on a tour bus with a baby in your lap.
    – lambshaanxy
    Sep 3, 2013 at 23:58

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