Australia's Red Centre: Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park

Detail from "Garak -- The Universe" by Gulumbu Yunupingu from Australia's Arnhem region at left. Full painting on right. Click to see large.Somehow this painting -- which we encountered in Sydney several days after visiting the Red Centre -- expressed more than any of my pictures the feeling of the great, mysterious rock features of this ancient place. According to a caption at the Museum of New South Wales:

"Yunupingu has explained that some stars, gan'yu, are special for the Yoingu people and that when she looks at the stars, she thinks about the universe and that all people are connected through the night sky."

I have a hard time writing about our experience/observations visiting the park at Australia's center. For aboriginal Australians, this is sensitive, perhaps sacred (though I think that is not quite the right word) space, where they find/enact their science -- their way of knowing all that is.

Our visit allowed us to snap the obvious photos. Here's Uluru at sunset:

The "whitefella" tourist custom is to snap these pictures while nibbling on crackers and dip and drinking champagne. This was altogether weird. But there was the rock.

Sunrise the next morning felt more appropriate.

For the last some 25 years, the local aboriginal people and white park rangers have managed the site together.

Welcome to Aboriginal land
Parks Australia and Anangu, the Aboriginal traditional owners, welcome visitors to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.
It is requested that you respect the wishes of Anangu by not climbing Uluru.

At the foot of Uluru, this request not to violate the peoples' apprehension of the universe by climbing the rock is repeated.

The request is routinely violated, though it was not by our group.

We did walk some on permitted trails adjacent to the great rock and also at the nearby red ridge Kata Tjuta.

There's a lot of power here.