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Ayers Rock: the sanctuary of the dreamtime

Uluru, known in English as Ayers Rock, is a gigantic red sandstone monolith in the heart of the Australian desert, immersed in mystery and legend. What is its significance for the Aboriginal people? Why are the marks left on it by erosion so important to them? Why do visitors who approach it feel a sense of the sacred that emanates from it?

Ayers Rock: the sanctuary of the dreamtime
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While exploring the arid regions of the Northern Territory of Australia in 1873, William Gosse discovered, south of Alice Springs, a series of dome-shaped rock formations. The most impressive was the large red monolith, which he named 'Ayers Rock' after the Australian Prime Minister, Sir Henry Ayers.

However, Gosse was unaware that the rock, which at dawn and dusk was bathed in vivid colors, already had a name—Uluru—given to it by the Aboriginal people.

The rough block of arkosic rubble, which rises 335 meters above the surrounding desert with a circumference of 9 km, is a crossroads of the Aboriginal Dreamtime paths.

Gosse had stumbled upon the site of the Sacred Water Python; of Kandju, the benign lizard; and of the people of the Kangaroo-Hare and Diamond Python.

Every crack, fissure, indentation, protrusion, and streak on its surface had meaning for the Aboriginal people. The damp stain on one side was the blood of the Poisonous Snake people, defeated in a famous battle of the Dreamtime. The holes in a boulder were the eyes of a long-dead enemy; the protrusion on another was the nose of an ancestor, now asleep. And every cave at the base of the rock had a specific function in the Aboriginal rituals.

A massive dome-shaped monolith that rises abruptly from a flat plain: this is Ayers Rock, which grad
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A massive dome-shaped monolith that rises abruptly from a flat plain: this is Ayers Rock, which gradually shrinks but without changing its shape. In fact, small flakes of identical thickness continue to break off from its surface. However, the Aboriginal people believe that their Uluru has remained unchanged since the Dreamtime, the era when it rose from a large, flat dune.

Who were the people of Ayers Rock?

The Dreamtime was the era when the land was still malleable and in formation. During that time, half-animal, half-human heroes embarked on journeys and quests, marking the trails and paths for their descendants that traverse the vastness of the Australian deserts. Swampy lands and springs were created and discovered. The survival of the Aboriginal people who still live in the desert depends on their knowledge of the places where water can be found, located along the Dreamtime paths, a knowledge passed down from ancestors in the form of songs and ritual ceremonies.

Ayers Rock: the sanctuary of the dreamtime
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But the Dreamtime is something more complex than this; its mysteries and magic are guarded in the minds and emotions of the Aboriginal people themselves. Outsiders can only catch a glimpse into the web of myths and legends. Uluru is an isolated landmark located along the Dreamtime paths, which form intricate designs across the continent. It was the home of the Dreamtime for the Pitjantjatjara people, the Kangaroo-Hare people who live to the north, and the Yankuntjatjara people, the Diamond Python people who settled on its southern side. Near Uluru, two great battles took place, still alive in the songs and ceremonies of modern Aboriginal people.

From the southern regions of the Dreamtime came a fierce tribe from the Poisonous Snake people, determined to slaughter the Diamond Python people. But Bulari, a heroine and mother of the land revered by the latter, confronted the furious assault by emitting a lethal cloud of disease and death, thus defeating the invaders. The bodies of some of them are still enclosed within the forms of Uluru. The survivors moved further south to wage war against other groups and met the same grim fate.

Even the Kangaroo-Hare people living on the northern side had to face an aggressive enemy—a terrifying "dingo of the devil." The horrible beast had been summoned to life by the songs of a hostile tribe, which then set it free after instilling it with a wild malice. The Kangaroo-Hare people fled thanks to their extraordinary leaping ability, and the tracks of their frantic retreat are visible in a series of caves surrounding the base of Uluru. But they could only consider themselves safe when the totem from which the beast drew its power was torn from its mouth.

Respect for Nature is an integral part of Aboriginal culture, and their art abundantly depicts anima
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Respect for Nature is an integral part of Aboriginal culture, and their art abundantly depicts animals and plants. For them, the living rock is the finest of 'canvases.' The Aboriginal people of Ayers Rock have created sacred paintings on the walls of caves, while populations from the far North, settled near the sea in Darwin, have adorned parts of Nourlangie Rock with decorative images of the fish that inhabit the East Alligator River: (from left to right) a barramundi, a saratoga, and a school of small catfish.

The Importance of Geophysical Signs

The rust-colored rock is primarily composed of sedimentary sandstone that crumbles like a serpent shedding its dead skin: despite disintegrating, it maintains its original shape.

All the geophysical marks left by time on the body of Uluru carry meanings passed down through legends, tales, or songs. In the folds of the rock, the Aboriginal people see the lizard, Kandju, who came here in search of the boomerang he had lost. On the northern side, the famous marks, which non-Aboriginal people have called "the Skull," are visible, as the pattern of the grooves resembles the head of a man.

Ayers Rock: the sanctuary of the dreamtime
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The rock is a natural trap for water. Around its base are eleven springs that provide a precious liquid reserve for the local people, passing animals, and the vegetation that grows in the area. Many sacred paintings are traced on the walls of the cave, some meant only for women and others for men. The two sexes must even avoid looking in the direction of the forbidden caves and lower their eyes when passing through the area. In 1978, a European woman who visited a taboo site was threatened with death. Ayers Rock was also the scene of the recent murder of Azaria, where the Chamberlain family claimed a dingo had kidnapped and killed their baby. It is unclear whether this death is connected to the Aboriginal people, but it remains one of the strangest 'murder' cases in the world.

The cave of the Kangaroo-Hare of Mala, into which non-Aboriginal people no longer dare to enter, is one of the places where indigenous boys are initiated into the tribe. The walls of this tunnel are covered in strange markings and inscriptions that, according to local tradition, were carved for ritual purposes by the first initiates of the Dreamtime and their successors. After being led to a large stone slab at the entrance of the cave, the young ones are painted with ochre; beside the natural platform stands a rock that represents the form assumed in sleep by an ancestor from the Dreamtime. The Mala cave is known among the Aboriginal people as a 'happy and prosperous place' where the initiates, once they return to their lands, weep with joy as they remember their initiation rites.

What is the impression of visitors to the rock?

Known as 'the dead heart' by white Australians, Ayers Rock is becoming a tourist attraction with all the issues that come with it. Many people climb beyond the white line painted on the side of the rock to photograph the stunning landscape from above. Few visitors fail to be struck by the intensity of emotions they feel when they stand before what is, ultimately, just a gigantic mass of red rock in the Australian desert. Robyn Davidson, an Australian who made an epic journey on camelback across half the continent, described the impressions she had in her book Tracks: "The indecipherable power of that rock made my heart race. I didn’t expect anything so mysteriously, primitively beautiful." But despite all the magical allure it emanates, the rock will remain Uluru to the Aboriginal people, who see themselves as the guardians of a symbolic landscape passed down to them by their ancestors.

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