The heart of the matter
ULURU, CENTRAL AUSTRALIA: Where every contour and shadow maps not just geography but 'songlines' etched into the world's oldest continuous culture.
The horizon surrenders Uluru reluctantly, releasing it inch by inch as we approach through pre-dawn darkness. The monolith materialises not as photograph or postcard but more a vast silhouette or void in the landscape against the lightening sky. Its edges slowly sharpen against the scatter of stars. December's heat already clings to skin like a damp cloth. It’s a weight that will grow heavier as morning advances to noon and beyond. Somewhere nearby, a bird calls with steadily descending notes; the sound trailing of in the eerie stillness.
I had read The Songlines1 years ago, and in it, I recall how author Bruce Chatwin likened this landscape to a country a musical score, “which could be read in terms of water and food." Standing here now, I’m beginning to understand his meaning, in that the land seems to speak in degrees or ‘octaves’ of colour and texture and sound, and the resulting ‘composition’ has been performing for eons.
Tourists gather at designated viewing areas, cameras poised, while guides murmur protocols in hushed tones: Where eyes may look, where feet must not tread, what sacred elements should remain unphotographed out of respect for Anangu traditions.
Strangely, there’s a tension evident. Maybe that’s excitement being at this place, at this time. Nonetheless, there is a palpable nervousness measured somewhere between wonder and intrusion, between experiencing and consuming.
This massive formation has existed for 550 million years, yet it feels acutely vulnerable under our collective gaze. In the growing light, I sense both the immensity of time and the fragility of the moment, each of us temporary visitors in a place that measures existence in millennia.
A stoney, wrinkled skin
When first light strikes the rock, colour bleeds across its surface. Not the postcard vermilion, but subtler shades of terracotta, rust, and dried blood. Closer inspection reveals Uluru's face is not smooth but textured with erosion channels, caves, and desert-varnished patches that resemble the wrinkles of an ancient being. The rock seems to breathe heat, a slow exhalation that grows more insistent as the sun climbs higher into an impossibly blue sky.
What appears singular from a distance reveals itself as geological wonder upon approach. This arkose sandstone monolith emerged from an inland sea some 550 million years ago, when the continent's heart was underwater. Sediment collected, compressed, and eventually thrust upward as tectonic plates shifted like sleeping giants.
What we see is merely the exposed portion—the majority of its mass lies buried beneath the desert floor, like an inverted iceberg of stone. Geologists speak of its composition in terms of feldspar and minerals, categorising its striations and explaining its oxidised surface, but such technical language fails to capture how it catches light, how it holds shadow, how it presents a different face with each passing hour.
The rock's surface tells stories through its erosive patterns. There is a language written in its weathered channels and hollows. Water has been the patient sculptor here, carving intricate drainage systems across the monolith's face during the rare desert rains. A local guide explains how during sudden summer thunderstorms, Uluru transforms entirely. The rock that now radiates baking dryness becomes a massive shower head, with dozens of waterfalls cascading down its steep flanks, creating ephemeral curtains of silver against the red canvas. These fleeting waterfalls feed temporary pools at the base, their waters reflected red from the rock like pools of fire.
In this way the rock stands as a testament to patience, with water sculpting stone over millennia, eroding certain surfaces while leaving others intact, creating a topography that Aboriginal creation stories describe with far more meaning than geological surveys. Scientists estimate its age through radiometric dating; the Anangu measure it through generations of continuous relationship, a timeline marked by ceremony rather than carbon.
By mid-morning, the temperature reaches 40°C. The air shimmers with visible heat waves, distorting perception until distant trees waver like apparitions. Reality here seems more fluid than fixed, boundaries dissolve in the haze. Persistent flies gather around eyes and lips. A broad-brimmed hat with overhanging netting that gathers loosely around your neck, is mandatory. No guidebook recommendation of this adequately prepares you for the reality. The ground radiates warmth through your shoes’ soles, red dust as fine as talcum powder coats everything it touches, working its way into the weave of clothing, the creases of skin, and becoming a second layer to carry away.
Walking the base trail, I notice how sound behaves differently as you move. Voices drop away quickly, absorbed by vast space, while certain bird calls carry with unnatural clarity across distances. The scent of eucalyptus rises from scattered trees, mingling with the mineral smell of hot stone and something else more primal: perhaps the breath of country Chatwin described as "a vast mnemonic system" where every feature and landmark corresponds to a First Nation’s story, law or body of knowledge.
"Anywhere in the bush," Chatwin wrote, "you could point to some feature of the landscape and ask the Aboriginal guide, 'What's the story there?' or 'Who's that?'" Here, each water-carved hollow and striated face holds meaning beyond its geological formation. A shallow cave becomes the mouth that spoke creation, a series of holes the tracks of ancestral beings, a weathered overhang the shelter where law was given. The rock reads differently when you understand it as text rather than object.
Walking between worlds
At the Cultural Centre, an Anangu guide speaks of Tjukurpa, the complex system of law, religion, and moral framework that connects her people to this place. The guide moves her hands as she talks, sketching invisible patterns in the air. They do not use Chatwin's term "songlines," but describe pathways of story and responsibility that crisscross the landscape like ancient highways. Their words carry weight beyond literal meaning, each phrase seeming to settle into the silence with particular gravity.
"Tourists used to climb Uluru," she says, gesturing toward the now-closed climbing route, visible as a pale scar against the red face. "Now they listen instead." The cadence of her voice changes slightly (a note of something between satisfaction and cautious hope).
The prohibition against climbing (officially implemented in 2019) represents a profound shift in relationship. Where once conquest on reaching the summit was celebrated, now respect manifests as circumnavigation. Walking around rather than up becomes an act of deference, a physical acknowledgment of the site's sacred character. The path around the base unfolds as a narrative itself with each turn revealing new textures, new plays of light against stone, new stories embedded in the landscape.
Chatwin's observation resonates: "To lose your way ... would be to fall off the Way of the Law." Here, the right way to be is clearly marked, yet somehow more demanding than the former physical challenge. It requires presence rather than achievement, listening rather than conquering. The flies continue their persistent attention, delivering lessons of patience and humility.
A school group moves past, their guide explaining how certain features in the rock represent Ancestral Beings from creation stories. The children's faces show varying degrees of comprehension and distraction as they squint beneath the brim of Legionnaire style hats. One girl trails her hand along a metal railing, then examines the red dust on her fingertips with quiet fascination. Then brushes her fingers against her shorts, leaving a swipe of dirty red dust like the Nike logo.
A long day’s journey into night
As afternoon deepens, the rock's complexion changes hourly. What appeared solid and monochromatic at midday reveals itself as variegated and dynamic, a canvas responding to light's shifting angles. Shadows extend from fissures like ink spilling across parchment, pools of darkness that grow and merge into new forms. The heat becomes oppressive, pressing against lungs, then relents fractionally as the sun begins its hesitant descent toward the horizon.
December in the Red Centre demands respect: water bottles, hats, and sunscreen become talismans against the elements, necessities carried with reverent attention. Yet the harshness carries its own austere beauty. Life adapts here with stubborn persistence: desert oaks with roots reaching toward hidden aquifers, small reptiles darting between patches of shade like whispered thoughts, wildflowers that might bloom briefly after rain, their fragility more poignant against the unyielding landscape.
At sunset, the spectacle draws crowds again. The rock performs its famous transformation: from ochre to orange to blazing red, finally settling into purple shadow as light withdraws. Each shade shift elicits murmurs from observers, cameras clicking in futile attempts to capture what can only be fully experienced through presence. Chatwin noted how Aboriginal people navigated "by a succession of sung landmarks," and watching this daily performance, I understand how such a prominent feature would anchor countless stories, its changing face marking time in ways more profound than clocks.
Night brings unexpected relief, a merciful coolness that seems to exhale from the earth itself. Temperature drops sharply after sundown, and the sky reveals itself as a vast cathedral of stars, so dense and brilliant they seem almost within reach. The Milky Way stretches overhead with breathtaking clarity.
What Aboriginal astronomers call the Emu in the Sky becomes visible, formed by dark spaces between stars, negative space creating meaning. In this moment, Chatwin's description of the land as "musical score" seems particularly apt, with the visual rhythm of stars mirroring the sonic patterns of traditional songs.
In stark contrast, modern art tries valiantly to compete with the cosmic illumination. The nearby Field of Light installation by artist Bruce Munro has 50,000 solar-powered glass spheres perched on slender wiry stems planted near Uluru, creating a breathtaking and wavering display as they gently illuminate the dark desert sands.
Visitor in an ancient land
Morning finds me watching the process in reverse: darkness retreating, the rock emerging once more from shadow like a slow revelation. Small guided tours with Anangu women at this time are a revelation. They speak quietly in Pitjantjatjara. Their voices rise and fall in cadences that seem to complement rather than interrupt the dawn sounds. Their presence here feels fundamentally different from mine. That is, not visiting but belonging, not observing but participating in an ancient conversation between people and place.
I think of Chatwin's struggle to understand this concept of the Dreaming. And not just stories of creation frozen in mythic past, but ongoing relationship and responsibility that continues to unfold in present time. "The Dreaming," he wrote, "is a moral system that binds people to their land." As a temporary visitor, I can appreciate the beauty and power of this place but cannot access its deeper meanings, cannot read the full text written in rock and sky and songline.
Perhaps this is as it should be. Some knowledge isn't meant for casual acquisition but earned through birthright and initiation, through generations of listening to country speak. Some stories aren't meant for retelling in travel essays, their sacred dimensions preserved through careful stewardship of who may hear them, when, and where.
The sun rises fully now, harsh light erasing subtleties, heat building once more. A desert breeze carries the scent of spinifex and stone, a fragrance both mineral and organic. I pick up a handful of the famous red soil, feeling its fine texture, its iron-rich particles that stain skin and clothing.
In a landscape this ancient, my presence registers as barely a blip. Yet even acknowledging this, something of this place will remain with me, something beyond photographs or souvenirs.
As Chatwin understood, certain landscapes write themselves into memory with indelible power, becoming part of our own internal geography, our own songline. The light, the heat, the silence, the stars: these will return in unexpected ways in the days and weeks and months and years that followed my December visit, carrying echoes of something vast and enduring in a world that too often values only what is tactile and new.
1987 book exploring how Aboriginal stories chart Australia's landscape through ancestral journeys.