The Giant Pebble

In the writings of early European explorers, Uluru was often described as a giant pebble. While this is the impression it gives, it does not just sit on the desert surface. The rock is the exposed tip of an almost vertical slab of sedimentary sandstone. Just how far down it goes is still unknown, perhaps six kilometers. The rock was recorded in 1872 when Ernest Giles saw it from the northern side of Lake Amadeus. He reached it the following year, only to find that William Gosse had just departed after examining it and naming it in honor of Sir Henry Ayers, premier of south Australia. Gosse wrote in his journal that it was “certainly the most wonderful natural feature I have ever seen.”

What Gosse saw was a rock measuring over two miles from side to side and a mile from front to back. The parallel ribbing across the surface of Uluru, which is so clearly seen from the air, is a product of the original layering of sediments. These layers were once horizontal, but tilting of the entire rock stratum has brought them into an almost vertical alignment. This is the more scientific interpretation; the Tjukurpa stories are far more poetic.

                                                                                                                                     - P.H.

The ancient stories teach the many crosscutting economic, political, and religious obligations associated with the Tjukurpa stories that form the basis for aboriginal law.

The ancestors who appear in the inma are described as men and women: They used tools and weapons, but they also behaved in ways illuminated by their animal counterparts. Another tale, for example, tells of the Possum ancestor who steals two Carpet Snake girls from Uluru and ties them up with a love song in the same way he clings to branches with his curling tail.

The worldview expressed in the narratives gives meaning to many aspects of traditional social life. The creation period is remembered as an age when the consequences of the heroes’ behavior established the form of the everyday world.