Uluru. The Anangu Had Been There Sixty Thousand Years Before Me.

The Destination

This edition opens Oceania. Lobster Bob is at Uluru, the sandstone monolith rising 348 metres above the desert in the centre of Australia. The track is Land. The type is Landmark. This is the first Oceania destination in the Postcards canon. The vehicle is La Mula LAM-001-VE, the truck Lobster Bob has driven across six continents. She handled the sand here without incident. She does not require recognition.

Uluru sits inside the traditional country of the Anangu people. They have been in relationship with the rock for sixty thousand years. Lobster Bob arrived recently. He has tried to act like it.

What follows is the postcard from a rock that does not belong to the person looking at it.

Hola Mijo! Lobster Bob here...

We arrived at Uluru from the north along the Lasseter Highway. La Mula was up front. I was in the passenger seat. Uluru appeared on the horizon at about forty kilometres out. It was a low shape at first. Then it was a larger shape. Then it became the only shape. There was nothing else of comparable size for hundreds of kilometres in any direction.

We pulled in to the cultural centre at half past eleven in the morning. The temperature was thirty-eight degrees. La Mula's bonnet was warm to the touch. The Anangu woman at the visitor desk did not look up from what she was doing. I waited. She finished what she was doing and then she looked up.

She was not impressed. I had been on La Mula long enough by that point in my life. I no longer expected to impress anyone. She did not either. She handed me a leaflet. The leaflet explained, politely and without ambiguity, what visitors do and do not do at Uluru.

The climbing chain was removed in 2019. It had been there since 1964. The chain was fifty-five years old when it came down. The Anangu had been at Uluru for sixty thousand years when the chain went up. They had asked for it to come down for thirty-five years before it was. The request was granted in the same way a host accepts an overdue apology from a long-staying guest.

I had not been planning to climb. I want to be clear about that. I have climbed enough rocks. La Mula has carried me to enough of them. I no longer treat them as a thing one does. But I noticed, at the visitor centre, that I had been about to ask whether the rule applied to me. I noticed myself about to ask. I did not ask.

That was the failure. The asking was already the wrong question.

I walked the base instead. The walk is nine and a half kilometres around the bottom of the rock. La Mula stayed where I had left her. She was doing nothing. That is what she does best when she does not need to be doing anything.

The base walk takes you past waterholes the Anangu have used for thousands of years. It also passes rock art that has been added to over generations. Some of it is too old to be precisely dated. Some of it is recent enough to have an artist still alive who made it. The rock face changes character as you walk. It is not one rock with one face. It is a rock with many faces, and the Anangu have a name for each of them.

I sat at Mutitjulu Waterhole for forty minutes. The water was real water in the middle of a desert that does not look like it should produce water. The Anangu had been drinking from it for longer than any continuous civilisation in human history has existed.

The school-yard fact is this. The Anangu have been at Uluru for sixty thousand years. The Pyramids of Giza are four and a half thousand years old. The Anangu had been at Uluru for fifty-five thousand years before the first pyramid was laid. A child can hold that on their fingers tonight.

Uluru turns colour through the afternoon. Brown in the morning. Orange by lunchtime. Deep red by sunset. The iron in the rock oxidises in the heat and the angle of the light does the rest. The Anangu have been watching this for sixty thousand years. They have had time to develop opinions.

I drove out at last light. La Mula handled the corrugated track at her own pace. I logged the day. I logged that I had been about to ask the question. I logged that I had not asked it.

The rock was a long way behind me by the time the stars came up. It had not moved. It had not been about to.

The World is Your Classroom. Humility is Your Compass.

Passport ready, mijo? The world is not going to wait forever.

Lobster Bob,
Founder & Scenic Tour Operator

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