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Solace in a Box of Rocks By Richard C. Paddock, Times Staff Writer
March 25, 2004 - ULURU, Australia - Superstitious or enlightened, tourists are returning pilfered pieces of Australia's Uluru, or Ayers Rock, a sacred place to the Aborigines. Nearly every weekday, rocks sent from around the world arrive here at the headquarters of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. Some are the size of gravel. One weighed in at 75 pounds. But they all have one thing in common: They were taken from a sacred mountain by travelers later weighed down by remorse. Most of these stones are pieces of Uluru, the huge red formation in the middle of the Australian Outback that is widely known as Ayers Rock. In what amounts to a geological diaspora, tourists have been taking pieces of the rock for decades even though Uluru's Aboriginal owners, the Anangu, consider the site holy. Some return their souvenirs out of the fear that they are cursed and can cause such calamities as cancer, car accidents, death and divorce. Others send their mementos back after gaining a new appreciation for Aboriginal culture. Taking a rock from Uluru, they realize, is like pinching a hymnbook from a church. "Please put these rocks and sand back where it belongs," wrote an apologetic, if ungrammatical, scientist living in Australia who returned two rocks and a container of soil last month. "I have collected (STOLEN!) it during my last trip and I feel sad about it. Sometimes even scientists are ignoramus. Sorry for that." Or as another put it in a brief note accompanying the rock he mailed back: "Please return to Uluru — six years bad luck is enough." Park officials aren't sure what they will do with the dozens of boxes of "sorry rocks" that have piled up in the park office over the last few years, but they welcome the growing sensitivity to Aboriginal customs sparked by public debate over the mistreatment of Australia's indigenous people. Anangu community leaders also appreciate the return of the rocks and hope that the public will come to respect other traditions of their people — including using the monolith's traditional name, Uluru, and refusing to climb it. "A lot of people want a piece of the place because they know how great it is," said Graeme Calma, chairman of the Anangu community at Uluru and deputy chairman of the park's governing board. "But they haven't realized the true significance or the power of Uluru."
Surrounded by the desert sand and enveloped by the dry heat, Uluru lies almost directly in the center of the continent. A solid piece of sandstone more than 2 miles long and 1 1/2 miles wide, it gets its unusual color from the rusting of iron in the otherwise gray rock. When there is rain, waterfalls cascade down the sides, forming waterholes that have long been a source of life for animals and people. At the base are caves where Aboriginal artists have painted for thousands of years. In the curves and crevices of the rock, the Anangu see giant snake trails and bloodstains — marks they say were left by the creation beings, the half-animal, half-human ancestors who they believe created the world. Archeologists say the earliest people arrived on the continent by land bridge and boat 60,000 years ago and have lived near Uluru for at least 22,000 years. Over time, they developed a rich oral tradition in which their religion, history, law and way of life were passed from one generation to the next through stories based on physical features of the landscape, such as Uluru, that are sacred. The locations are linked by paths, sometimes called "songlines," that also are hallowed. The founding of a British penal colony in Australia in 1788 marked the beginning of the destruction of Aboriginal culture. The settlers hunted down Aborigines and took their land, much the way Native Americans were slaughtered in the United States. Today, Aborigines live in slums across Australia. Cut off from their traditions and left with few opportunities, some young men seek escape by drinking alcohol and sniffing gasoline. Last month a riot erupted in one of Sydney's poorest districts after residents blamed police for the death of a 17-year-old Aboriginal boy. Rioters set fire to a train station and injured 40 police officers in street battles. A mile from Uluru, 200 Anangu live in the dilapidated community of Mutitjulu. Many residents have built fences to keep out desperate gas sniffers, who vandalize neighbors' property in search of fuel. Prime Minister John Howard has refused repeated requests that the government apologize for historic abuses of the Aboriginal people, but some Australians have been moved by the debate to express their own regret. "Please return these rocks home as a symbol of one white man's attempt to make amends for my people's past," wrote a man who sent back two rocks from Uluru he had kept for 12 years. "Even if our leader is not sorry for what we have taken from you, I am." Explorer William Gosse, the first white man to climb Uluru, named it Ayers Rock in 1873 after colonial Gov. Henry Ayers, but few outsiders visited the remote desert region for much of the next century. In 1958, the government created Ayers Rock-Mt. Olga National Park. The lesser-known Mt. Olga, 20 miles west of Uluru, is a similar rock formation known to the Anangu as Kata Tjuta. It is even more sacred than Uluru, and some tourists who lifted rocks there also have mailed them back. The park encompassing the two rock formations became a popular tourist destination in the 1970s after the opening of the Ayers Rock Airport and the Ayers Rock Resort, a collection of hotels and restaurants. Although anathema to the Anangu, climbing Uluru has been promoted from the start as one of the big attractions. To aid climbers, the park installed metal posts in the rock with chains to serve as handrails. In a rare move toward reconciliation, the government in 1985 returned the parkland to the Anangu, who leased it back to the park service. Since then, it has been under joint management by the park service and the traditional owners. The park was renamed Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park in 1997, but the name Uluru has been slow to catch on. The airport and nearby resort continue to use Ayers Rock, as do some travel agencies that promote trips to Uluru. "It's 2004 and people still call it Ayers Rock," lamented Steve Ewings, a spokesman for the park. "A lot of that is sheer resistance to Aboriginal input." That also goes for climbing the rock, an affront to the Anangu, whose tradition allows only trained Anangu elders to make the mile-long trek to the top, and only during ceremonial occasions. Tribal leaders say the rock is too dangerous to climb: At least 37 tourists have died on the mountain since the park opened. Rather than banning the climb, the elders believe, it is better to teach visitors not to hike up. They suggest instead that visitors take the six-mile hike around Uluru. "Tourists don't know it's not just a big rock for them to climb," said Wally Jacob, a member of the Anangu clan. "It's the place where the ancestors were and still are. If you ask us, we will say, 'Please don't climb the rock.' When people fall off the rock and die, it's not the government that cries for them. It's us." In recent years, the park has prohibited climbing when the weather is wet or windy, but officials have been hesitant to challenge the powerful travel industry and outlaw the ascent. The park has posted a sign asking people not to scale the rock, but the chains beckon and thousands of people climb to the top every year. Officials may not exert much influence over the travel business, but they do their best to control media coverage. The park requires journalists to obtain a permit to conduct interviews or take photographs, and it restricts what photos can be taken — including prohibiting pictures of climbers. Despite the new awareness of Aboriginal culture, some tourists still can't resist plucking souvenirs. They have been doing it for decades. But a few years ago, a handful of those tourists began sending them back. As word of the return of the rocks spread, the initial trickle became a landslide. A logbook kept by the park service shows that it has received 300 packages of rocks in the last 15 months. Most were mailed from Australia, but others have come from the United States, Britain, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Germany, France, Malaysia, Canada, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Many arrive carefully packaged in bubble wrap. "This rock has been longing for return," one tourist wrote. "I have procrastinated, as I am now within my homelands, North America. Today it has broken into two and made its final request to return to its source." For the park, putting the rocks back is not as easy as it sounds. Often, there is little information to indicate where at Uluru or Kata Tjuta the rocks came from. In some cases, tourists took them from the top of Uluru, and Anangu tradition prevents the staff from climbing up to return them. The few that have been put back come with precise information describing their origins. Last month, a man signing himself "a repentant tourist" returned his small rock with a map and an Australian $100 bill (worth about $75 U.S.) to cover the cost of returning it to its rightful place. For now, most of the sorry rocks sit at park headquarters. Some are on display in the park's cultural center with a sample of the letters. Calma, the official on the park board, said the community might use the rocks next year to make a memorial commemorating the 20th anniversary of the park's return. Anangu elders say there is no curse connected with the rocks, but that's not what many visitors believe. Some blame their Uluru keepsakes for years of misfortune. One man wrote that he visited Uluru in 1992, got mud on his shoes and kept the red soil as a souvenir. Soon after, his troubles began. His kidneys failed and he suffered chronic depression, he wrote. He had two strokes and received kidney and pancreas transplants. His wife had an affair, divorced him and won custody of their daughter. "In view of the above history and in view of possible new relationships," he wrote, "I would appreciate if you could return the soil to Uluru." Anangu elders suggest that people who take fragments of Uluru shouldn't blame the rock, but instead look within. "I think a lot of people bring it on themselves," Calma said. "It's not the stones. It might be the person." But most who send back rocks express genuine remorse, as did this letter that came from "an awestruck visitor": "Sorry, I know it was wrong," the writer said. "I have no excuse. Please help me make amends by replacing this piece back on Uluru. It's been away for two years. It needs to go home. My guilt and karma can't take it anymore." Source: Los Angeles Times
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The
giant red rock is an awesome sight. Rising 1,140 feet from the desert floor, its
sides are nearly vertical. In the shifting light of the Outback, it can change
from a reddish-orange hue to a deep red. For some, visiting it is a mystical experience.
ours
+ others photo 