A NEW DAWN
The ban on climbing Uluru marks a new chapter in the storied life of this Anangu sacred site.
BACK IN THE CITY AFTER MY FIRST VISIT to the Red Centre, I found myself feeling proud of the red dust that still clung to my walking boots – a physical connection to a not-so-distant memory. And, months later, I read about Patti Smith’s lifelong desire to visit Uluru in her waking-dream-like memoir Year of the Monkey – how the soles of her shoes were already red long before she finally made it there three years ago. I wondered what it was that had a punk pioneer from New York dreaming about a remote part of Australia for so many years. And why people from all corners of the globe are so magnetically drawn to this iron-rich monolith in the desert outback.
Bruce Munro, a so-called Pom like me, first travelled to Uluru in 1992 as part of a farewell trip after living in Australia for eight years. It was then that he conceived, in his sketchbook, the idea for Field of
Light – the solar-powered installation of 50,000 spindles of light that come to life at night in the shadow of Uluru. On the rooftop of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, overlooking a behemoth of a cruise ship docked at the cruise terminal, a very different kind of monolith, I ask if he can pinpoint what had inspired him back then. “It really happened over a number of days,” he remembers. “We stayed around for about five days – and I just said to [then fiancée, now wife] Serena, ‘I don’t know what it is about this place, but I feel like I’m being plugged into the grid’.” He likens this feeling to a runner’s high. “It’s that sort of thing where you just dissolve; you’re momentarily a part of everything. And I thought, ‘How do you express that’?”
Since it launched in 2016, Field of Light Uluru has become such a global phenomenon that its run has been extended indefinitely. Arriving in a small convoy by camel through the sand dunes and spinifex, I first glimpsed it from a viewing platform at sunset with bush-tucker canapés and sparkling to hand. As the light went deep and honeyed and the
“Uluru as a place is for us to learn that landscape has power,” says Munro. For him, Field of Light is a way of expressing how the land has inspired him, “because I think there’s something here that we don’t understand.”
bubbles fizzed to my head, the embers of Field of Light began to glow softly, illuminating the ground in a carpet of colours that mirrored the changing land and sky around me: pink, violet, ochre, blue. We dined in the dark as the colours intensified, a sea of slender stems crowned with frosted-glass spheres blooming rhythmically through the night. It was magical, fantastical; the most effective artworks are ones that bypass intellect and cut straight to the emotional core.
By day, I felt the same thing in the presence of Uluru. As visitors, there are things about the Rock that are not ours to know, but we can still feel its resonance. For Aussies, the feeling goes far beyond this. “Uluru is such a familiar sight to Australians; it is intrinsically part of our national identity,” says Grant Hunt, CEO of Voyages Indigenous Tourism Australia, which operates Ayers Rock Resort. “We have grown up with the image of Uluru as a national emblem, learned about it at school and seen the increased awareness of its cultural significance and respect for its traditional owners. Uluru has come to represent the spiritual heart of our nation and its ancient culture.”
Last year’s long-awaited closure of the controversial climb signals a shift towards a more culturally sensitive kind of tourism in Australia. Uluru has been sacred to its traditional owners, Anangu, for tens of thousands of years and climbing was not generally permitted under Anangu law, moral systems and culture, Tjukurpa. Visitors began scaling Uluru in the late 1930s and, by 1964, a chain was installed and the climb was well established as a tourist attraction; by the 1980s, 80 per cent of visitors to Uluru were endeavouring to climb it. When in 1985, Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park was handed back to the Anangu people, the question of closing the climb was first raised; while Anangu didn’t like the practice, it would remain allowed – for now. Signs were erected at the base of the climb in the 1990s that asked visitors, on behalf of Anangu, not to climb. In 1994, the national park was renominated as a cultural landscape by UNESCO and the number of visitors choosing to climb began to drop as they learnt more about Anangu’s culture and their wishes.
In the months leading up to 26 October – a significant date that marked 34 years since ‘handback’ – visitation spiked and questions were asked as to whether tourism to Uluru would tumble after the climb closed. But the decision had been unanimous and based on fulfillment criteria that included the number of visitors climbing falling below 20 per cent.
“I was a member of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park Board of Management when the climb closure decision was made and, at that time, we were confident the destination would not suffer as a result,” says Hunt. “We believed the cultural values of the traditional owners should carry maximum weight and the majority of the travelling public has a level of cultural maturity and understanding. I still strongly believe this.”
I absorbed both the magnitude of the sandstone monolith as well as its surprising texture and nuances: the patina of holes, gashes, ribs, valleys and caves that erosion has left on the rock over millions of years.
Anangu man Sammy Wilson, chair of the board of management of Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park and the Central Land Council, extrapolated on those ostensibly intangible cultural values in a statement issued in November 2017 when the closure was announced. “The climb is a men’s sacred area. The men have closed it. It has cultural significance that includes certain restrictions and so this is as much as we can say,” he wrote. “If you ask, you know they can’t tell you, except to say it has been closed for cultural reasons. What does this mean? You know it can be hard to understand – what is cultural law? Which one are you talking about? It exists; both historically and today. Tjukurpa includes everything: the trees; grasses; landforms; hills; rocks and all. You have to think in these terms; to understand that country has meaning that needs to be respected. If you walk around here you will learn this and understand.”
I stood at the foot of the climb not long before it closed. Between the large signs pleading politely and the obvious physical challenge it posed to those determined to climb – 37 people have died while attempting it, and many have been injured – it baffled me why anyone would want to. But then again I’ve always puzzled over the strange human instinct that compels us to climb to the top of things. ‘Reaching the summit evokes strong emotions of pride, achievement and ownership,’ one of the signs read, before asking, only somewhat rhetorically, ‘Is this a place to conquer – or a place to connect with?’
Better to navigate the 12-kilometre base of Uluru on a Segway instead, which is not quite as incongruous a way to see the spiritual heart of Australia as it first might seem. Electric and zero-emission, Segways have minimal impact on the environment and make for a fun and breezy alternative to walking and cycling in the heat of the day. As I coasted along the red-dirt path, I absorbed both the magnitude of the sandstone monolith as well as its surprising texture and nuances: the patina of holes, gashes, ribs, valleys and caves that erosion has left on the rock over millions of years. Along the way, my guide shared stories about the incredible geology of Uluru – the tip of a huge slab of rock tilted 90 degrees that continues below the ground for possibly five to six kilometres – as well as the culture of Anangu, too. Our journey ended at Mutitjulu Waterhole: a special, shady and restorative spot, it’s one of the few permanent water sources around Uluru.
A Segway tour is one of a multitude of ways to experience UluruKata Tjuta National Park: other options run from high-octane sky diving to high culture by way of Opera Australia and from earthy
bush food experiences to luxury glamping at Longitude 131°. With its galaxy of brilliant stars above, the Red Centre is made for stargazing and, during my time there, I learnt tales of the southern night sky from an Indigenous perspective – blinking and seeing, for the first time, the Southern Cross as a possum. The Red Centre is also rich in art experiences. I painted my story with Maruku Arts, a not-for-profit art and craft corporation that’s owned and operated by Anangu. With the help of a guide and local artist, I translated Tjukurpa symbols into my own experiences and gained a deeper appreciation of the cultural complexity of Central and Western desert dot paintings.
My final evening in the Red Centre brought with it an unforgettable open-air fine-dining affair. With a name that means ‘beautiful dune’ in the local Anangu language, Pitjantjatjara, Tali Wiru saw our small group travel out to a remote southern dune for a Champagne arrival at golden hour accompanied by the reverberant notes of a didgeridoo. The air was charged and the flies weren’t so bad – it wouldn’t be a trip to the outback without them. I snacked on more canapés crafted from bush tucker, with ingredients like green ants, known as gulguk, wild-harvested right there in the Northern Territory, and took in a 360-degree view of the desert, the distant domes of Kata Tjuta, and the constant paperweight on the horizon that is Uluru. I had never quite seen a sunset like it and stayed taking photos in the almost-dark until the final daub of colour melted away and the air went still. It was time for dinner.
An intimate four courses under the stars, the native ingredientinfused dishes included pressed wallaby with charred witlof, pickled grapes, wild garlic, quandong glass and Davidson plum; and Glacier 51 toothfish with kombucha and bush honey-roasted heirloom carrots, Jerusalem artichoke puree and bush grains. We dined quietly, so we could hear the silence.
The previous day, I’d made a journey to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park’s other iconic rock formations with one of SEIT Outback Australia’s off-the-beaten-track tours. Kata Tjuta is a Pitjantjatjara term that means ‘many heads’; the 36 domes in question rise up to
546 metres above the desert plain and were formed by the same geological events – beginning 550 million years ago – that left the monolith of Uluru exposed to the elements.
The area is sacred under Anangu men’s law and is accessible to visitors via the Walpa Gorge walk and the more challenging 7.5-kilometre-long Valley of the Winds walk, which I hiked in the relative cool of the early morning. All potent umber cross-hatched with the silvery-green of hardy desert plants and capped by an absolute blue sky, the ancient landscape is sculptural and alive, the energised sandstone almost vibrating underfoot. At several intervals our guide, Rick, asked our group to disperse, find a spot on our own and listen to what the earth has to tell us.
“Uluru as a place is for us to learn that landscape has power,” says Munro. For him,
Field of Light is a way of expressing how the land has inspired him, “because I think there’s something here that we don’t understand.” But what he does know is that it’s changed his way of seeing. That visiting Uluru and learning about Tjukurpa is a way to appreciate more fully that everything – all things terrestrial and celestial, past, present, future – is connected.
In the opening pages of Year of the Monkey, an as-yet unvisited Uluru shoots into Patti Smith’s psyche at the Dream Inn in Santa Cruz. It reenters my consciousness in another incongruous place months after my visit, a fitness studio above what used to be a Blockbuster Video. Lying in Shavasana at the end of a yoga class, instructor Ben conjures up the image of this “vast, still, miracle of a stone” in the middle of our country. “It’s interesting that the majority of Australians live on the edge of this huge continent, far from the centre, and the deep stillness at its heart. We can also live our lives this way, too.” He invites us to imagine our own centres like Uluru: “vibrant, still, silent, spacious. Anangu talk about the important stories of Uluru being not at the top, but around the base, and that these are what they want to share. The space where our deep stillness, our awareness, meets our living and doing can be the most life-giving. Rest here,” he says, as our heart rates slow and our minds settle, “at the very centre of your body.”
With that, Uluru provides another way of seeing. A shift in perspective at once subtle and seismic that you can hold with you at all times, that’s the takeaway from this special place and that’s what I’m seeing when I look at the red dust on my boots.