When I was a kid, my parents took me to see Chartres, a Gothic church that rose wondrously out of the flat French countryside as we drew closer. Approaching Uluru was like that too. No wonder it's a sacred place for Aborigines. Look how the sandstone rock formation changes color with the time of day.
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| 11 a.m. |
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| Late Afternoon |
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| Sunset |
We camped in the same park as Lindy Chamberlain, just four years after she became one of the world's most famous accused murderers. At first, nobody believed a dingo ate her baby but as soon as one howled, we overheard Australian tourists nearby begin to debate Lindy's guilt. Watch A Cry in the Dark to see why.
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| Gum, or Eucalyptus Tree |
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| The Brain |
Dad and I made sure to climb the shadeless Uluru, named Ayer's Rock by colonial explorers currying political favor, early in the morning before the sun got too hot.
Metal chains strung between embedded iron posts assisted visitors in making the ascent which is no longer permitted. Dad pulled himself up at the age of 65. We were there in much different times.
A notebook set on top of a cairns registered people who completed the 1,500 foot climb. I deliberately omitted USA from my entry in defiance of the Reagan Administration.
My feeble protest lasted only as long as it took for Dad to join me. He scrawled USA next to New York, NY. His blithe revision--as if he had been correcting my homework--helped me understand how he could never see me as anyone other than his son. Can you tell I wanted to commit patricide in this photo? Kata Tjuta is visible behind us.
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| Looking East from the Summit |
Somehow, fairy shrimp survived the brutal climate.
The Olgas, as we knew them then, beckoned to the west.
It's easy to see why the Aborigines named them Kata Tjuta, which means "many heads."
This knobby sandstone photo is another early example of the close-up abstractions that have obsessed me ever since .
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