Ayers Rock Of Australia
According to Aborigine legend, the great sandstone monolith Ayers Rock (known also as Uluru), which stands over a barren landscape of gnarled desert trees in Uluru-Kata National Park in Australia, was once an ocean. After a violent battle raged on its shores, the waters rose up and became rock to protest the bloodshed. The largest single exposed rock on earth, twisting 1,150 feet from the surrounding sands and delving more than three and a half miles below the surface, Ayers Rock overwhelms the senses with patterns of water erosion that dip and weave like ocean waves and colors that change by the hour. Depending on the weather and time of day, the monolith can appear blood red, slate grey, pastel pink and even blue. As the wind passes through the rock's folds, it whispers a quiet tune.
For the Aborigine people, Ayers Rock is more than simply an awe-inspiring reminder of nature's creative force. It is the core of their mythology, a source of energy known as Tjukurpa, or 'dream time,' and a home for a multitude of ancestral beings. Every stone, cave, tree, and depression possesses a story and it because of this that, for thousands of years, Aborigine parents have taken their children to the great monolith to teach them to paint the abstract symbols that illustrate their myths. More than a decade ago, ownership of Ayers Rock was returned to Australia's native people.
"It remains for individual discovery so long as the human mind retains its capacity for wonder," wrote poet Rex Ingamells, capturing the essence of the uniqueness of each person's experience at Ayers Rock. Making a pilgrimage to the site is like accessing a sacred history that is at once personal and universal.
