The 50 Greatest Walks of the World by Barry Stone

Author:Barry Stone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd

Photo: Corey Leopold

Uluru has been sacred to the Anangu for tens of thousands of years. They believe it to have been born during Tjukurpa, the ‘creation period’, when their ancestral being made not only the Australian landscape, but the entire world. From Tjukurpa came everything they hold dear – traditions, religious heritage, and the ways of daily life. Tjukurpa provides laws on how to care for one another, and how to care for the land, and tells of the inter-relationships that exist between animals, plants, humans and the environment around them in a land that is still inhabited by the ancestors and their spirits. It’s important to know something of this before arriving here. When you come to Uluru you need to understand the ancient world you are entering, both geological and ancestral, a proper appreciation of both that will greatly enhance your sense of discovery.

The Anangu would prefer if you do not walk on the rock, though as mentioned, permits are available and many people in fact do so every year. The circuit (or base walk), however, is there as the ideal compromise and in many ways will provide a far more intimate, solitary experience of Uluru than you’ll get walking in a conga line to the top. The circuit is best started at either the Mala or Kuniya car parks, and is a flat, wheelchair-friendly, easy-to-follow dirt path that in places resembles snake-like grooves, which the Anangu will tell you were made by the ancestral being Kuniya as it journeyed to the nearby Mutitjulu waterhole. Trees and shrubs, including acacias, bloodwoods and native grasses, flourish in Uluru’s sheltered gorges, and some twenty species of native mammals live in its shadows including black-flanked rock wallabies, the marsupial mole, the spinifex hopping mouse and malleefowl, a ground-dwelling solitary bird the size of a chicken.

In addition to walking the full circuit there are also a number of shorter trails as well as ranger-assisted walks. The 1.5-hour, 2-km-long Mala Walk is a free ranger-led walk along the rock’s northern side that begins at 8am each day from October through to April, and 10am from April to September. The ranger, a local Anangu, takes you along a shaded track, pausing to discuss points of Aboriginal law, rock art, and the history and lifestyle of his people, and it ends at the rock’s lovely Kantju Gorge with its large semipermanent waterhole beneath steep canyon walls where you’ll learn about some of the dramatic creation-time events the Anangu believe were responsible for the creation of the rock. The Mutitjulu Walk is a 45-minute return, 1-km walk along Uluru’s southern side that leads to a waterhole which is home to Wanampi, an ancestral watersnake.

Uluru is part of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, the 512 square miles of which also include the 36,500-million-year old conglomerate rock domes of Kata Tjuta – colloquially known as The Olgas, 25 km to the west of Uluru and set in a surprisingly lush desert landscape. The Olgas – the tallest peak

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