Uluru (Ayers Rock)

Northern Territory, Australia

William Mackesy’s account of this walk

(Note: I climbed Uluru in 2001. This has over the years become increasingly controversial and is planned to be banned from October 2019. I have a lot of sympathy. So this is becoming a historical record) 

Your first sight of Uluru (Ayers Rock) is unforgettable, however it happens. Mine was from the air; there had been nothing below us for hundreds of miles except flat, featureless, empty land, when the great rock suddenly slid into view, a weird hot orange dome among the parched, pale green grass and trees of the desert. The Rock really is like nothing else - other than the nearby Olgas, its less famous but perhaps even more interesting neighbours. Famous sandstone formations, such as the great buttes at Monument Valley in the USA, don’t even eat at the same table. It is strange seeing something so famous in the flesh for the first time, whether a person, a building, a picture or a place; instantly recognisable, yet always slightly different from its image and consequently a bit disconcerting or even disappointing. While extraordinary and gorgeous, Uluru has perhaps been over-marketed- a national trait, the cynic could argue. 

The Rock is, you are frequently told, the world’s largest monolith.  It is hard sandstone composed of feldspar (decomposed granite) particles.  Its natural colour is grey, its famous red colouring a surface phenomenon only, caused by oxidation of iron in the rock.

The Rock originated around 550 million years ago as an alluvial fan of an ancient river, the silt from the erosion of a long disappeared mountain range which was once of Himalayan height.  The area was later covered by a shallow sea, and layers of sediment accumulated above the future Rock, crushing it into its present consistency.  The whole area was subsequently folded and uplifted, and the softer surrounding rock was eroded away, leaving the Rock standing proud in its glory.

Uluru’s fame means that, like other renowned places, you are seldom alone there. 

The whole area is superbly managed, with a recently built complex housing up to 5,000 visitors tucked among the dunes some 20 km from the Rock.  All visitors are carefully restricted to quite small areas, which is good for the ecology, and necessary, but it is hardly spontaneous, pushes you into playing the helpless tourist, and is not great if you like your beautiful places served in solitude sauce.  This is not helped by the cost, starting with the airfares, coming close to systematic gougeing.

Most of that day’s compliment of visitors were present when we watched the famous sunset, all herded into small viewing areas. It is apparently illegal to park on roadsides, so everyone gets crowded together, I suppose laudable, but ridiculous when you are surrounded by thousands of empty square miles.

At least 12 sleek air-conditioned buses were ranked to our rear; lesser vessels, from minibuses to backpacker vans blasting music (at least it was Dylan), pullulated  around them. The front of our enclosure was carefully fenced; behind it, waiters popped champagne corks at belinened tables (for the bussers) and ’packers swigged from there their tinnies.  It had a faint whiff of a British point-to-point racing meeting, albeit at 35 degrees and with a substantially undressed crowd.

The sunset was wonderful.  A few kilometres away, the Rock shone, bright brown madder, a huge steep-sided, flat-topped dome, from this angle magnificent in its monumental regularity. The relative absence of the deep clefts which are a feature of much of the rock left this a blank surface for the changing light. 

The humid, cloud-streaked sky produced marvellously intense, unpredictably evolving light effects, parts of the Rock at times tinged with purple.

The rock imperceptibly sank through burnt sienna and Indian red to burnt umber.  The sun, now on the horizon, slipped behind a bank of cloud, and the Rock slid into deep violet; no advancing line of shadow, but an intangible dissolution.

Our walk began shortly before 6 the next morning.  We were to climb the Rock, then circumnavigate it.  We had had some misgivings about making the climb, as we had read that the local Aboriginal people prefer visitors not to do so, although this is disputed and in any event appears to be based on distress over injured climbers rather than religious prohibition.

A crowd waited at the bottom of the climb in the mellow pre-dawn half-light.  A ranger released a barrier, and upwards we streamed, a multi-national snake winding up the narrow path.

The Rock is not an easy climb. Although it is only some 350m above the desert floor and a bit short of an hour to the top, including breathers disguised as view admirations, the first half is a panting scramble up a steep, narrow spur, with sheer drops on each side.  The sandstone is not a bad walking surface, even and very firm, although it can get slippery where worn or wet, and offers no way of stopping if you start sliding.  Although the rock is surprisingly hard, huge blisters can peel off the surface, without warning.  A number of people have died here over the years.  Everyone makes grateful use of the chain which loops up this section 

The view quickly becomes thrilling, the quiet expanse of the early morning desert receding to the brightening horizon, broken only by the dark silhouette of the Olgas, over 40 km away.

We climbed in deep, cool shadow, a blaze of light now haloing the top and sides of the Rock ahead of us.  We gained the summit plateau, and stood, open mouthed, in front of a breathtaking view: ahead of us, Mt. Connor, a perfect tabletop, was silhouetted nearly 100 km. away. Just above it, the already fierce sun blazed between tentative and soon dispersed bands of cloud, the sky the palest imaginable orange.    Behind us, the Olgas stood out from the scrub as if rosily spotlit. 

From here, paths wind across wave-like undulations in the top of the dome, the beginnings of the deeply carved gorges which are a feature of the lower slopes; their crests flaming in the early sun, their bottoms, two to four meters lower, remained in the deepest shadow. There is almost no vegetation on this extraordinary plateau, except a few stunted bushes clinging to cracks containing pathetic fragments of soil.

The Rock is profoundly important to the local Aboriginal tribes, and its luminous, majestic otherness can arouse transcendental stirrings in the most sceptical of Western hearts.  When, however, we reached the summit, there were 30 or so visitors, mostly young, shouting and laughing, oblivious to anything except mutual photography.  Smaller groups were scattered at a safe distance, sitting in quiet contemplation.  We found a remote spot and let our thoughts wander. 

The desert had now lost its penumbra and was beginning to quiver in the fierce sun.  At only 7 a.m., it was already hot and would later reach 44 degrees.

The return walk was uneventful, although the steepest section was easier to descend semi-absailing  along the chain.  My toes developed painful little blisters, uniquely on the second joint, from less than 15 minutes of steep descent: The rock slopes so steeply that, with no steps cut, one’s full weight falls on this soft little area.

From the bottom of the climb, we turned right onto the Mala walk, the first part of the 10 km. circuit of the Rock’s base.

This area is specially significant to the local Aborigines.  It contains extraordinary wind-carved shelters at the bottom of the cliff, some with aboriginal ochre and umber coloured paintings, and caves where their men, youths and women and children camp separately at the time of the great rituals at the Rock.  Deep in a great recess, the Kantju waterhole, one of the few reliable water supplies in the area, nestles darkly amongst tall eucalyptus trees, at the foot of a perfectly smooth 100 metre cliff down which, in wet weather, a torrent will crash.

This section is directly away from the morning sun, and it was still in cool shadow at ground level.  The sun was now creeping down the wall above, the sky, rock and trees forming the sort of semi-abstract pattern of complimentary colours which so enthralled Cézanne.

Tiptoing past the older mens’ cleft, the most sacred place on the Rock, we rounded some bushes and emerged suddenly into full, fierce sunlight.  The path now skirted the long, comparatively smooth, north-east face of the rock, now hot, light orange in the mid-morning sun.  The trees had given way to spinife grass and scrub and the air over the deep red-brown sand was becoming uncomfortably hot.  A low rock stood out in the scrub, some strange wind-smoothed boulders on its top.  Rounding the sharp eastern corner of the Rock, its vertical strata, eroded into great waves and troughs, were most easily visible.

The area boasts a wide array of intriguing bird and plant life. The birds can be hard to find, during the tough dry periods in this arid region, but some wonderful kingfishers, fairy-wrens, falcons, honeyeaters and budgerigars can be seen. Plants rage from tough, fire-resistant trees (the wanari actually needs fire for its seeds to crack and germinate) to spinifex and tumbleweed. You may see a lovely array of wildflowers after one the rare rains. 

The long southern face is more deeply eroded, with extraordinary gullies, overhangs and holes gouged into its surface.  The path took us past sand dunes 30,000 years old. 

At the south-western end of the rock lies Mutitjulu, the area’s most reliable waterhole, at the foot of a great ravine above which we had stood earlier on. The patterns on the rock faces around the waterhole tell the take of the battle between two ancestral snake beings, an important part of the local Anangu people’s creation myths.  Further on, some large boulders around the track are pieces of emu meat dropped by another ancestral being, a blue-tongued lizard. 

Now hot and tired, we swelter under the final, western, face, the great spur up which we had laboured earlier coming into sight, a few ant-like figures silhouetted against the fierce sky.