Anangu Land
One of the best places to see aboriginal culture is around Alice Springs with Uluru (Ayers Rock) as one of the most famous sacred places of the Anangu tribe. I saw many photos before of this place, but it was until I saw it in reality how immense this monolith is. The grandeur comes to expression when the sun rises or sets. Then the rock changes from a dark deep blue colour into flaming red. Almost like a pelgrim I made the 10 km loop walk around the rock. I thought is was going to be boring to look at just simple rock, but here I was wrong. The nanganu have been living here for thousands of years and to them is far more than only a rock. Climbing is not common and is only during very special events. I started to wonder why tourists attempt the trail to go on top of Uluru… Thousands of years the already started to tell the Dreamtime stories. People also lived there. There is a ‘kitchen cave’, a shelterThe rock paintings were simple, but I think they give a pretty good idea what the kids learned in the ‘teacher’s cave’. Paintings of rock wallabies (extinct since the 19th century), emus, kangaroos, but also water holes and shelters of animals. Most places are not described because these are secret stories. We, tourist, just look at them. With our ignorance we trample the rock, photograph it… and just in the 3 hours of time you get just that tiny bit of aboriginal culture in your backpack. It wasn’t much, but it was enough the realize that Australia has history, but not recorded as we do now. Should we still ignore aboriginal believes and culture? Too many questions, but the hardest to answer is wether there will be ever a solution of the enormous gap between aboriginals and the current western society. An easy question, but with a tough answer if any exists.
