Uluru

Not only today, but since thousands of years is Uluru - or Ayers Rock, as it was named by the European Settlers - a very important symbol. Since tens of thousands of years Aboriginal people lived in the area surrounding this big monolith, the Anangu. For them Uluru is a holy place - part of the creation time and therefor the base of their belief and traditional law.
When the fight for the former free land the immigrants defined a big area in central Australia as reserve for the Aborigines - with Ayers Rock within this reserve. 1940 the Europeans defined the area around Ayers Rock and The Olgas as National Park and took the land out of control of the Anangu - a cultural shock for these people. Consequently they were not able to care for many of their sacred places and could not exercise many of the ceremonies important for their believes.
Only 1985 - after many years of negotiations - the title deeds to Uluru were handed back to the Anangu on condition that the area is leased back to the government for 99 years as National Park.
Today the Uluru - Kata Tjuta National Park is managed as a "joint management" by Anangus and Parks Australia - primarily under Anangu traditions with scientific support by the white Australians. Most important is the traditional law - not always easy to be brought in line with the interests of tourism.
One of these difficulties - visible every day - is the famous "Climb": the climb to the top of the rock is a main attraction at Ayers Rock - for Anangu a thing they would never do because of its great spiritual significance for them. Although everywhere you can read the request to respect the law and culture by not climbing, many people still see it as a challenge they have to take ...

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Right on time - one and a half hour before sunset - we look for the best place at the "sunset viewing area" to enjoy the changing colours undisturbed by trees or visitors.

Surely we are at the right place for sunrise!			But we are not the only ones ... instead of kangaroos only tourists jump into the pictures.
We do - beside smaller walks - the "Base Walk" which leads right around the whole rock. Here we can see Uluru from all possible angles and we discover: it is not as round and even as it seems from far!

Only when being close to the rock, we get a feeling for its size: 348 metres high above us, 3.4 kilometres long and 2.4 kilometres wide - the base walk is more than nine kilometres long.
Many of the caves at the base were used as classrooms for a long time, the walls were used as blackboard. The rock-paintings that are found here are hard to date and have been painted over many years. The different colours make it easy to see that different motives have been painted over each other.
And Uluru has more faces than you might know from postcards - on a drive around it we discovery it once again from many perspectives ...