Sights and Sites
ULURU
The Mysteries of Australia’s Natural Monolith
by Paul V Young
Image Credit: http://www.crystalinks.com/uluru.jpg
Climbing Uluru has been likened by
many commentators to clambering up on
the sacred altar of an ancient cathedral.
The Anangu original custodians of the site
discourage visitors from climbing, and
would like to see the practice stopped
completely. This is not just some old rock
to be ticked off tourists’ bucket lists, it is a
natural monolith of meaning and mystery.
While it is probably true that few
white Australians have the same affinity
with our land, or the ability to ‘read’ its
features, as the Original people, many of
us do approach it in a spirit akin to that of
pilgrimage. Since the site, together with
Kata Tjuta, was handed back to its
traditional custodians on 26 th October
1985, the realisation has dawned that this
grand monument created by nature’s hand
deserves the respect it has been accorded
for the past twenty-plus millennia. This
sentiment was elucidated in an article by
author Thomas Keneally: “Those of us
who were told in Australian classrooms
that a Dead Heart lay at the core of our
continent have come to value Uluru as a
living, central presence.” 1
Uluru, for our overseas readers,
was known for a time by its ‘whitefella’
name of ‘Ayers Rock,’ while Kata Tjuta
was called ‘The Olgas’ back in the
nineteenth century. Together they
comprise two of the country’s best known
natural icons (along with the Great Barrier
reef, of course) and sit in a National Park
in Central Australia, 350kms South West
of Alice Springs. Often incorrectly referred
to as the largest monolith in the world –
that accolade goes to Mount Augustus in
Western Australia which is two and a half
times larger – Uluru, in second place, is
what geologists call an inselberg (or
‘isolated rock hill’), and its essentially red
1
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/16/magazine/t
he-mysteries-of-ayers-rock.html