Uluru

The next morning began my 3 day tour of the center of Australia's best known attractions. Between stops we took in some other sights, including some wildlife, a working cattle ranch, and some interesting roadhouses. Uluru was first on the itinerary.

For those who have heard that Uluru is in or near Alice Springs, it isn't. We spent the first morning from about 6 am till right about noon covering the roughly 250 miles of bush between them. A word to the wise concerning outback travel: you can get more places in a ute than you can in a big air conditioned tour bus, but they are nowhere near as comfortable. If you ever find yourself on a ute tour of the outback sit in the front seat if you can. Your back and butt will thank you. Also, pack light, wear comfortable shoes, and don't bring anything that you don't want impregnated with stubborn red dust. And one more thing: be ready for scenery that's out of this world.

Before we got to Uluru we had to gas up at a roadhouse and a quick inspection of the back paddock revealed a pair of camels. Few people outside Australia understand the significance of the camel in Australia's history, but this animal was critical to European exploration and settlement of the outback. The camels came to Australia as pack animals with Afghan immigrants, who were themselves brought to Australia to work on developing infrastructure (primarily railroads) in the arid center of the country. The transcontinental railroad here is called the Ghan in honor of the Afghans' resilience in the desert environment, and their contribution to early exploration of the interior. Their camels quickly became the favorite mode of trasportation for savvy outback travelers due to their durability, ability to haul heavy loads, and modest food and water requirements when compared with horses. Given these attributes, their less desirable behaviors such as spitting and biting were understandably forgiven. I gave the local cameleer a couple of dollars to do a lap around the paddock on one of his beasts and was immediately impressed by how tall they are. I have ridden horses a fair bit, and you are a LOT higher off the ground on a camel than on any horse. They are so tall that you can't climb onto them like a horse. The better trained ones kneel so you can get on or off, otherwise you have to use a ladder. Camel saddles are much simpler and harder than horse saddles, but they were a welcome respite from the horrors of the back seat in our ute. To borrow an Australian turn of phrase, riding in that ute was hard yakka. It got to feel like a kick between the big toes.

Once we got to Uluru we had a walk around the the base and visited a few of the culuturally significant sites around the base. The most striking thing to me about Uluru is its size (the path around the base is nearly 4 miles long), but almost equally as surprising is the way the texture of the rock changes with location or perspective. From one place it may look perfectly smooth, from another it will look wavy, and from another it could appear jagged and craggy. In some places the rock almost appears to be rotting away as the surface is pocked with hundreds of little caves and tunnels. The walk around the base took almost 2 1/2 hours and it seemed that at every vantage point the rock had a different texture or appearance, even though the entire structure is a single giant piece of stone.

The Anangu people are the traditional residents of this part of Australia. The Anangu consist of two separate groups, the Yankunytjatjara and the Pitjantatjara. Their Tjukurpa or Wapar (in the Pitjantatjara or Yankunytjatjara languages, respectively), which means roughly religion, heritage, and law all rolled into one concept, provides traditional explanations of how many of Uluru's features came into existence. In some places this knowledge is recorded in rock paintings, but the Anangu say the natural texture and color of the rock tells the history of their land, which in turn forms their religion. In their traditional belief system you don't need a natural history textbook to tell you how modern landforms came into existence because the land itself is the text. The Anangu are not unique in this regard. Most Aboriginal groups regard ancient history to be self evident in today's landforms to those who know how to interpret them. The law component of Tjukurpa or Wapar is conveyed orally.

One of the most important aspects of Tjukurpa or Wapar is that long ago, ancient beings called Tjukuritja shaped what was previously a featureless earth through their activities. The Tjukuritja were the ancestors of modern humans, plants, and animals. When humans inhabited the earth the Tjukuritja didn't leave, but either took spirit form or became integrated into the land. Thus in Tjukurpa, a mountain or stream may not only be the track left by Tjukuritja, it may be the Tjukuritja itself. Because the land not only tells the stories of their ancestors but also contains the ancestors themselves, the land is sacred to the Anangu and stewardship of the land is their sacred duty.

There are many stories that together make up the history of Uluru as the Anangu understand it. Most of them revolve around a conflict between two giant snakes. Even in my very short time there I heard different versions of the story, but the basic thrust of the story as I understand it is that one snake, Kuniya, came to Uluru from the west. At the same time a venomous snake called Liru approached from the opposite direction. A conflict ocurred in which Kuniya ultimately killed Liru. In some versions Kuniya and Liru take the form of opposing tribes which identify with snakes, and Kuniya is often associated with a mother or motherhood. The versions that include the tribes of people explain that the holes in Uluru's face are the marks left by the combatants spears, and waterholes around the base are drops of blood from wounded combatants. I was told that one rock formation in particular is supposed to be Kuniya in snake form looking back at Uluru as she left the battlefield. I came away from Uluru thinking that like most purely oral traditions, Tjukurpa or Wapar seem to have central themes that are constant, but that the details can be adjusted to suit the teller or the audience. To me the story of Kuniya and Liru seems to be about the conflict of good over evil and the cost of waging that fight.

Photos:

1. Our ute and trailer next to the quintessential outback road: long, straight, dusty, and empty.

2. Camel riding

3. The group with Uluru in the background. The couple on the right were from Scotland, the two in the back were students from the US studying in Australia, the woman on my left was a British traveler just in from southeast Asia, and the one in black to her left was Dutch.

4. This is probably the best photo I have to demonstrate the size of Uluru. It seemed to go straight up, and the summit isn't visible in the photo.

5. The stone that is supposed to represent Kuniya. The snake is looking back to the right over itself.