Anangu dance performance. Under aboriginal law, each group is required to look after sacred sites and keep alive the ceremonies and traditions associated with them.

I dreamed of reaching for a penny on the ground, but however hard I strove to bend and pick it up, I could not. Scene change: I was walking though a huge warehouse stacked with skids piled with paper money. I was told by my guide that I must acquire all the money in the building. Scene change: back to the penny, ad nauseam. Interpretation? Perhaps I was sensing the state of postindustrial man’s striving after material gain and losing his connection to the natural world.

Where dreaming tracks cross

My experience was at odds with that of the Anangu. The natural world is their physical and spiritual reality and forms the basis of their oral history. Their stories explain the world’s creation through the exploits of mythical ancestors who lived in the Tjukurpa, or “Dreamtime.” These origin myths form the basis of the law governing all aspects of traditional behavior, but Tjukurpa does not refer to a collection of ideas obtained from dreams.

Tourists traversing some of the slopes and crevices of Ayers Rock give a sense of the outcrop's mammoth dimensions.

Under aboriginal law, each group is obliged to look after the dreaming places, or sacred sites, created by the ancestral heroes and to hand on the traditional songs, stories, and ceremonies that commemorate the ancestors’ adventures in that territory. Neighboring groups help each other and share an obligation to protect and commemorate that tradition.

Uluru is one of three major locations in central Australia where the tracks of several ancestral groups cross. These tracks are often referred to as dreaming tracks and eventually tie together living desert people throughout central Australia. At Uluru, local Aborigines take the casual visitor on guided walks along some of the dreaming tracks. Many areas are out of bounds to all but the initiated Anangu. Some areas are also off limits to either male or female members.