Uluru – Kata Tjuta National Park is internationally recognized as a World Heritage Area. It is one of the few properties in the world listed for both its cultural and natural values. Uluru – Kata Tjuta was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1987 when the international community recognized its spectacular geological formations, its rare plant and animals and its exceptional natural beauty.
The traditional landowners of Uluru – Kata Tjuta National Park are the Yankunytjatjara and Pitjantjatjara people who speak their own language and teach it to their children. In the aboriginal language they call themselves the Anangu people.
The formation of Uluru and Kata Tjuta began approximately 500 million years ago when mountain ranges in western Australia, then taller than the present-day Himalayas began eroding, with sediment-laden waters flow eastward. For millions of years sediments built higher and higher, eventually burying the sandstone layers that would one day become Uluru and Kata Tjuta. Then at one point, about 100 million years ago, shifting of the tectonic plates forced the sandstone layer to pop up out of the ground at almost a 90-degree angle to form the present day rock formations. While Kata Tjuta is made of a sedimentary rock called congolomerate (a mixture of gravel, pebbles, and boulders cemented together), Uluru is made of sandstone and is the largest monolith in the world.
The red color of Uluru, Kata Tjuta, and the desert sands is caused by the high iron content which oxidizes, or rusts, when exposed to the elements.
We decided that we needed to go to the Outback and see Uluru for ourselves because of its cultural and natural significance, and because it is iconic Australian outback. At first I was ambivalent about going but upon first sight was instantly drawn to it. Since I find it difficult to put my thoughts and feelings into words, I am again going to borrow a passage from Down Under by Bill Bryson. I have also picked a passage from Down Under because there haven’t been any blog entries recently and you all need something big to read, and because you should go out and buy the book.
The thing about Uluru is that by the time you finally get there you are already a little sick of it. Even when you are a thousand miles from it, you can’t go a day in Australia without seeing it four or five or six times – on postcards, on travel agents’ posters, on the cover of souvenir picture books, and as you get nearer the rock the frequency of exposure increases. So you are aware, as you drive to the park entrance and pay the ambitiously pitched admission fee of $25 (a part of which goes to the Anangu) a head and follow the approach road around, that you have driven 1,300 miles to look at a large, inert, loaf-shaped object that you have seen photographically portrayed a thousand times already. In consequence, your mood as you approach this famous monolith is restrained, unexpectant – pessimistic even.
And then you see it and you are instantly transfixed.
There , in the middle of a memorable and imposing emptiness, stands an eminence of exceptional nobility and grandeur, 1,150 feet high, a mile and a half long, five and a half miles around, less red than photographs have led you to expect but in every other way more arresting than you could ever have supposed. I have discussed this since with many other people, nearly all of whom agreed that they approached Uluru with a kind of fatigue, and were left agog in a way they could not adequately explain. It’s not that Uluru is bigger than you had supposed or more perfectly formed or in any way different from the impression you had created in your mind, but the very opposite. It is exactly what you expected it to be. You know this rock. You know it in a way that has nothing to do with calendars and the covers of souvenir books. Your knowledge of this rock is grounded in something much more elemental.
In some odd way that you don’t understand and can’t begin to articulate you feel an acquaintance with it – a familiarity on an unfamiliar level. Somewhere in the deep sediment of your being some long-dormant fragment of primordial memory, some little severed tail of DNA, has twitched or stirred. It is a motion much too faint to be understood or interpreted, but somehow you feel certain that this large, brooding, hypnotic presence has an importance to you at the species level – perhaps even at a sort of tadpole level – and that in some way your visit here is more than happenstance.
I’m not saying that any of this is so. I’m just saying that this is how you feel. The other thought that strikes you – that struck me anyway – is that Uluru is not merely a very splendid and mighty monolith, but also an extremely distinctive one. More than this, it is very possibly the most immediately recognizable natural object on earth. I’m suggesting nothing here, but I will say that if you were an intergalactic traveler who had broken down in our solar system, the obvious directions to rescuers would be: ‘Go to the third planet and fly around till you see the big red rock. You can’t miss it.’ If ever on earth they dig up a 150,000-year-old rocket ship from the Galaxy Zog, this is where it will be. I’m not saying I expect it to happen; not saying that at all. I’m just observing that if I were looking for an ancient starship this is where I would start digging.
Quite apart from that initial shock of indefinable recognition, there is also the fact that Uluru is, no matter how you approach it, totally arresting. You cannot stop looking at it; you don’t want to stop looking at it. As you draw closer, it becomes even more interesting. It is more pitted than you had imagined, less regular in shape. There are more curves and divots and wavelike ribs, more irregularities of every type, than are evident from even a couple of hundred yards away. You realize that you could spend quite a lot of time – possibly a worryingly large amount of time; possibly a sell-your-house-and-move-here-to-live-amount of time – just looking at the rock, gazing at it from many angles, never tiring of it. You can see yourself in a silvery ponytail, barefoot an in something jangly and loose-fitting, hanging out with much younger visitors and telling them: ‘And the amazing thing is that every day it’s different, you know what I’m saying? It’s never the same rock twice. That’s right my friend – you put your finger on it there. It’s awesome. It’s an awesome thing. Say, do you by any chance have any dope or some spare change?’
Uluru during the day
Propping up the rock
Uluru at sunset
Uluru at sunset
Uluru at sunset
Uluru up close at sunrise
Uluru up close at sunrise
Aboriginal rock paintings - the Anangu people have been here for over 40,000 years
Uluru up close during mid-afternoon
Interesting bit called the lips
