Member-only story
Australia Rocks #1
Uluru from a different angle
Uluru (Ayres Rock) is an Australian national emblem and has special significance for the Australian Aborigines. This side of it is not often shown in photos, but it is typical of the complexities to be found at every turn as I walked around it.
Uluru is a sandstone monolith reaching 848 metres into the sky and an estimated 6 km into the ground. It is made up of 300 million years’ of sediment laid down by a river before it tilted 90°, with the strata now forming almost vertical ridges.
Bits have sloughed off over the millennia and weathering has formed caves and waterholes — all of these have traditional stories attached them and many of the caves and waterholes are sacred to the indigenous people.
The Rock, as it is affectionately called, sits on land that has been ‘returned’ to the Aborigines, who have in turn leased part of it to the Australian federal government, whose National Parks Authority jointly administers it with the traditional owners as the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.
Uluru is also considered the notional heart of the country, appearing out of the ground in the south-west corner of the Northern Territory (25.3444° S, 131.0369° E).
It is a place to sit and contemplate.
[Daan Spijer asserts the moral right to be acknowledged as the author of this work]
