http://www.racv.com.au/wps/wcm/conne...o/travel/uluru
This link is the cover story from the Feb2014 issue of Melbourne magazine RoyalAuto. It features Uluru (previously called Ayers Rock), the huge, red, world-famous rock in the middle of Australia. It was also the location of the baby Azaria Chamberlain dingo case, which later led to the movie "Evil Angels"/"A Cry in the Dark" (starring Meryl Streep and Sam Neill). I'm spending May29-30 at Uluru on my first visit to central Australia (based around a football game on May31 at nearby Alice Springs). I'm determined to climb to Uluru's 350m summit (despite the indigenous people's request to respect it from ground level only) and walk around its 9Km (5 mile) perimeter.
I was fascinated to discover through this article that:
The rock extends 2-6Km (1-3 miles) underground
It's growing bigger all the time
People seeing it for the first time are often moved to tears.
The included photo of the nearest accommodation shows that, even 20Km (12 miles) away behind it, Uluru dominates the landscape.
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ULURU - YOU WILL BE WOWED
No matter how far or wide you may have roamed, you’ll still call your first sight of The Rock something very very special. Story: Jenny Brown
This was not how I’d envisaged first approaching The Rock. Instead of an emu-soft tread of reverence and respect for Uluru, I’m on the back of a thundering Harley with wind buffeting the helmet so noisily I can’t hear myself think. But I don’t need to think. And in the end, the mode of approaching Australia’s most iconic natural feature is irrelevant. I’m moved to tears.
This response is common, Dwayne the Harley driver reassures me. “People don’t say a lot because they’re so overawed just trying to take it in.” Maybe that’s what the traditional Anangu owners mean by their invitation to “open you hearts and minds to the power of the (Uluru) landscape and the mysterious Tjurukpa”, the creation force that connects everything. This is where you will feel it, where your preconceptions and perspectives will be challenged, say the Anangu. “This is a place of great power and knowledge. A good place to listen to country.”
As graphically cliched as Uluru the tourist magnet has become, the initial encounter with the rock is a guaranteed mind-blower. Awesome. Immense. So starkly orange under the azure afternoon sky, and made more magical – if possible – in the intensified refraction of dawn and dusk that paints it in so many transmuting tones, that although he has been guiding people to The Rock for 10 years, Eric Hossack reckons that it looks different every day.
“I’ve seen it mauve, and purple. I’ve seen it brilliant red. I’ve seen it turn black when it rains. It never ceases to amaze me. You should see it when a full moon rises behind it! That one big rock.”
You should see it under the mantle of 200 billion stars “in the best place in Australia to see the stars”, says astronomer and night sky tour leader Mike Dalley. “You will be wowed.”
It’s one gigantic compacted chunk of sandstone: 348m high, 9.4km in its hulking circumference and, depending on what geologist you talk to, buried between 2km and 6km underground. The part above ground has been weathering for millennia, yet the rock refuses to diminish. Eric says that as the sands continue to blow away, “that rock will continue grow. In 50 million years it will be bigger than it is today.”
Mike was right. Wow!
Since the Anangu asked visitors not to climb Uluru, because it is crossed by songlines and alive with creation stories and significant cultural sites, now only 20% of the park’s 250,000 annual tourist numbers will attempt the difficult ascent. The others are satisfied in heeding the Anangu request to just look at it, touch it, photograph it, or walk around the base and absorb an experience they say you will take home in your heart. “It’s a question of respect,” say the signs. “Is this a place to conquer or a place to connect with?”
Since the 1970s when the scrappy original campgrounds and motels were demolished and tourist facilities moved 20km away from the “island mountain”, to Yulara, the multi-faceted facilities of the Ayers Rock Resort. Yulara sees Uluru and its paired geological cousin Mt Olga – more correctly Kata Tjuta, meaning “of many heads” – as the distant but ever-brooding scenic set pieces to all the area’s tourism offerings.
You can ride around the perimeters of the 132,000ha national park on a loping camel. You can drink sparkling wine to the sunset spectacle and enjoy fine dining under the stars. You can and must get up before dawn to enjoy an outdoor breakfast while watching The Rock morph from a hulking black shadow on the horizon into what William Gosse – the first white man to see it in 1873 – described (from a distance of 55km), as a hill of “a most peculiar appearance. To my astonishment it was one immense rock rising abruptly from the plain”.
After a while it is just ever there, ever present: the eternal red behemoth that UNESCO has inscribed on the World Heritage List as a living cultural landscape.
Uluru has been a cultural landscape for 10,000 years, at least. In more recent times, since 2011 when the Indigenous Land Corporation took ownership of Yulara and responsibility for the running of the resort, the potential for cultural immersion and interaction has been presented as a much more direct experience. And it has become a two-way exchange.
Where two years ago there were less than a handful working at the resort, today 170 indigenous employees from both the local area and all parts of Australia are members of the broader workforce. Your waiter might be the grinningly charming Wiggy – 20-year-old Zawai Wigness from Thursday Island. Or Colin Cedric, 26, from Cairns. Both are trainees at the resort’s centre for the education of indigenous young people in hospitality and tourism. The five-star Sails In The Desert hotel employs 23 indigenous workers. “They’re incredibly proud of their jobs,” hotel general manager Andrea Nestle says. “They’re very positive about it”. Some wait on tables. Some work in the kitchen. “A few have become shift leaders,” Andrea says.
Proud? Colin says he “loves it here”. Wiggy is hoping he’s on a career path “that will take me far”. Riley Scott, 19, from the Sunshine Coast, is three months into her training and has ambitions to be a hotel receptionist. “I like the training,” she says. “It’s such a great opportunity.”
“The idea”, says resort PR director Karena Noble, “is for this to become a showcase and a national centre for indigenous excellence.”
Already it is showing up as very positive and very empowered. The crew making your sandwich in the hottest new cafe in town, Kulata Academy Cafe, are all trainees on the program. The bush yarn spinner, the instructors in boomerang and spear throwing, the guy who leads the desert garden walk that explains the traditional use of native vegetation for bush tucker and medicine, are all young Aboriginals, so evidently proud to be sharing what they know about their culture.
The dance troupe of white-ochre-daubed lads from country NSW kick up a storm of dust as they mimic brolgas, goannas and kangaroos in their daily public performances. Taine Davison, 21, from Mait*land, has been dancing at The Rock for 14 months and he explains why so much stomping is part of the show. “By stomping the ground, we are paying respect to Mother Earth.”
Taine realises he is part of a strong culture. “It runs through my mind every day. I like telling people. I like changing their whole perspective about Aboriginal culture. That’s my main goal: to change people’s perspective of Aboriginal culture.”
Taine’s grandfather, 67-year-old “Pop” Boney, recently came to visit his grandson. As Taine danced, Pop stood at the back of the crowd. “When I saw him after the show,” says Taine, “he was crying.”
Uluru (Ayers Rock) in central Australia
