A rickety bus crammed full of sweaty backpackers rolls through the hot red landscape. The desert extends out flat as far as the eye can see. We ride along, each of us trying to catch the first glimpse of the spectacle we flew out here to see. A gasp escapes from a woman in the back of the bus. We all turn. A red shape emerges from the distance. Driving closer and closer along this lonely road, we look in awe as the formation pierces the flat landscape, the shape growing at each turn the bus takes. Cameras snap, but the bright blue sky against the red landscape is impossible to capture. We pull up and look out the window, it’s so much bigger than we could have ever imagined. A location dripping with history and tradition. An icon of Aboriginal culture. We step out of the bus and marvel at the gorgeous natural wonder of Uluru.
Uluru, or as it is known by its colonial name, Ayers Rock, is the largest single rock in the world. It rises 1,142 feet out of the ground, with the bulk hidden like an iceberg underground. The awe-inspiring grandeur of the natural formation is nothing compared to the magnificence of the history and culture surrounding the place. The Aboriginal people, one of the longest-continuing cultures on earth, and the traditional owners of the land we now call Australia, have used this rock for communal ceremonies and food and water collection for tens of thousands of years. Before we even begin walking around the rock we sit down and our tour guide tells us about the sacred nature of the place. She tells us about how we are embarking on a journey around this location laced with culture. But, she says, we are not allowed to learn all of its stories.
Unlike their counterparts in many Western cultures, the Aboriginal people pass on knowledge through oral tradition. To ensure that the wrong stories are not passed on to future generations, the lessons of the land are kept only by respected elders of the communities. The Aboriginal community limited our tour guide, a white woman, to the knowledge that a child in the community would be given – enough to survive and appreciate the culture – but nothing more. The community allows her to pass on only certain stories to our group, leaving us mystified and eager to learn what we could.
As we begin walking around Uluru, we are struck, not only by the beauty of the striking red rock before us, but by every additional morsel of knowledge our guide can offer us. She tells us about traditional ceremonies, stories of creation, and weaves tales of the gods and spirits of the land into our journey. Though we are denied deeper knowledge, we quickly come to understand the significance of this place. She asks us not to take photographs at certain religious sites and to be silent at pools of water. We respect the culture of the traditional owners of the land enough to do so. We continue our walk, listening and learning with reverence.
As we conclude our journey, we are appalled to see a blatant act of disrespect for Aboriginal culture before our eyes: people hiking up the side of Uluru. When the British colonists discovered this sacred space hundreds of years ago, they decided this it must be climbed and conquered, and not long after that they began to promote massive tourism to the outback by advertising Ayers Rock climbs. In the 1960s a handrail was added, which made the ascent more accessible but only increased the level of disregard towards the traditional owners of the land. Today, despite the efforts of the Aboriginal people and the giant signs at the base detailing the reasons not to hike on this sacred space, many tourists still climb the rock. Our group looks on, horrified at the contempt people show for this long standing culture. Although it may seem like only a rock, this site is a sacred one and deserves to be treated with respect by all visitors. One surely does not need to know much about the Aboriginal people to realize it is not acceptable to walk past the huge signs urging visitors to refrain from climbing the rock – we certainly didn’t.
When we pile back into our bus, the mood has shifted. No longer are we looking out the dusty windows at a grand rock seemingly dropped in the middle of a boundless desert. We see a different place. We see a sacred space, entwined with stories and secrets and the lifeblood of a people. But we also see a scar. A scar left by years of footprints eroding away the face of the rock, and by decades of profaning the space through these continued colonialistic actions. As the bus drives further and further away, the cameras still snap – an attempt to somehow capture one last look at the rock in all its might. But this time what they have trouble capturing isn’t the red land or the blue sky. It’s this feeling, a mix of awe at the magnificence and sadness at the defacement – an understanding of a place we can never truly understand.
