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ULURU -- This mammoth crimson carbuncle of sandstone is the central monument of a vast, largely uninhabited continent. It is a natural wonder and treasure that awes the 19 million citizens, even though the overwhelming majority of them, living far, far away in coastal settlements such as Sydney and Melbourne, have never seen it.
To most, the glorious dome is a tourist site called Ayers Rock, recognizable across the world, especially since recent Olympic TV coverage zeroed in on Australia as a whole. But it holds deeper meaning as a religious shrine to the original Aussies, the dark-skinned Aborigines. Their name for it is Uluru.
One man's holy place, however, can be another's playground. Testimony to that are the daily lineups of climbers, eager to scale the steep, 1,150-foot monolith (sometimes tragically falling off), just as English college students are known to make sport of clambering up towering cathedrals. The "because it's there" rationale seems to apply. But there are those who adhere to the pristine Aboriginal belief of the area's Anangu people, hunter-gatherers, that it should be left alone, in the care of their holy men and gods.
However, my friend Aurelio has itchy feet possessed by ascendancy syndrome. It has prompted her to slog to the top of Kilimanjaro and the base camp of Everest, tromp endless stairways to lofty towers like those of Pisa and San Gimignano or belfries such as Notre Dame and St. Peter's. While respectful of Uluru's spiritual standing, she promised to tread upward and downward lightly, and not trouble any gods or worshippers.
"I can't be this near and let Uluru escape me," she said at Alice Springs, the Outback outpost where we'd arrived after a 1,000-mile journey from Adelaide on an enjoyable train called The Ghan. "It's only a 270-mile drive to Uluru now, and the road is good."
Even paved - "sealed," in Aussie parlance.
At least there is a road. Twenty years ago it was a rumor. You pointed the car in the general direction and bounced and jounced along a wavy dirt trail, wary of wild camels and horses, kangaroos, and huge lizards called goanas. And terrorized by road trains: trucks with as many as seven trailers that blasted along, expecting everything else to get out of the way. It was an adventure, risky if you broke down or ran out of gas. Peter Severin's barroom and gas pump at Curtin Springs, about halfway, was a sanctuary, the only fuel of any kind between Alice and The Rock.
"We can put a little adventure into it by going off the paving and cutting through to Kings Canyon," Aurelio was saying as she took the wheel of an ordinary rental sedan. An immediate sign proclaimed, commandingly: "4 WHEEL DRIVE VEHICLES ONLY - SPECIAL SKILLS REQUIRED," as tarmac ceased and the bumps-and-grinds of earth and gravel, ruts, rocks, dunes, and gullies began.
"Well, weve got four wheels, and, maybe," she said hopefully, "they'll all stay on."
That was questionable. Bad vibrations took over. Shivering, shuddering, shaking, the car and Aurelio gamely dealt with the terrain of Henbury Reserve that was covered with scrub, pimpled by low buttes, and dimpled by a dozen broad craters from an ancient meteor shower.
Another sign insisted that this was Ernest Giles Road. Road? Ernest Giles, the honoree, must have
been spavined, crooked of frame and had a bad disposition.
A piece of the dashboard came loose and fell in her lap. "Faulty workmanship," she commented, "but this Holden is holdin' up just fine."
Amazingly, it did for the two hours and 60 miles across roller- coastering landscape of terra-cotta red and bony white to Watarrka National Park (a.k.a Kings Canyon), where asphalt resumes. The sheer canyon walls of burnt orange sandstone shoulder up almost 300 feet, fencing in the placid gorge that is cooled by high-stretching gum trees, ghostly white and strident scarlet, and trickling Kings Creek.
Back on a genuine two-lane highway, we approached a dark mesa resembling a chocolate cake. Often mistaken for The Rock by newcomers, it is Mount Conner, the private summit of an irrepressible pioneer, Peter Severin. When you see Conner's hump, you know that it's Peter's neighborhood, the million-plus acre cattle ranch called Curtin Springs Station.
Holding court, as ever in the intense heat of late afternoon, Peter, a wiry, wispy-haired little guy of 73, was sitting in his undershirt pouring beers for passers-by in his roofed patio amid tall cactus. Self-deprecatingly, he was discussing his autobiography-in-progress with his ghost, a woman named Rose.
It ought to be a terrific story if Rose gets it down right. Wild West stuff, even though it was as current as 1956 that he cowboyed a cattle drive 1,000 miles from Adelaide and staked his claim here in downtown noplace to launch a beef empire of more than 1,000 square miles. Peter and his hands built everything from scratch, and local stone: pub, gas station, home, bunkhouse, stables, and barns.
"Trouble is," he was saying, "you can't find anybody who can ride a horse to work for you anymore. My hip is too crook now for me to get in the saddle. We use motorbikes and helicopters to muster a herd, get the stock sorted out. But a bull can knock over a motorbike, which never happened with a bloke and horse that knew what they were doing."
Back in 1981 he had taken me in, fed me in his kitchen, and put me up when I was lost, out of gas, and feeling pretty dim, knowing that it wasn't unusual to perish when stranded out here. Numerous other Severin alumni could say the same of his treatment, the essential three B's: beer, beefsteak, and bed.
"Truck full of blokes stopped here on Christmas Day years ago needing petrol," he recalled. "I told them Christmas was the one day of the year I didn't pump petrol. But come on in for dinner. We'll fill the tank up tomorrow."
Named Curtin Springs for a forgotten prime minister, the oasis should be rechristened Severin Springs. He laughed as he said, "They were going to call it Stalin Springs, for old Uncle Joe, our wartime ally. Wouldn't that have been something? Would have had to serve Russian vodka along with beer, I suppose.
"Well, come back and see us again. It's easy now. Sealed road. Other places to get petrol. Pretty civilized these days. We've had a phone for 12 years, and now," he rolled his eyes, "we've got a Web site. Some kid runs our computer. Beyond me."
Me, too, Peter.
He said he'll be buried on top of his mountain, along with his two wives, "but not for a while I hope."
Someone at the table asked if he's in the market for wife number three. Peter smiled, shook his head, and recited: "Man isn't old when he's gray, or even when his teeth decay. But when approaching his last sleep, it's the appointments he can't keep."
Aurelio said she had an appointment with The Rock, and we departed, soon to see it popping up from the desert like a red cabbage.
"Don't fall off," Peter had advised. "Wouldn't want to lose a customer."
She didn't. Nor did I, since I didn't give The Rock a second shot at me. "Did it in '81," I told her. "Didn't like it then, and - unless they've put in an escalator - it isn't likely I would this time. Uluru or Ayers, it's still an acrophobic nightmare in broad daylight."
I had an appointment with the excellent swimming pool in the peaceful courtyard of Sails in the Desert, a superb hotel that is a far cry from the quonset hut motel of my initial stay. Better to splash than splatter.
Aurelio is up and at it early to beat the heat and most other partakers. She loves it, would have hugged the massive bubble if she could have extended her arms for three miles. The damn thing goes straight up on the western side where a slightly indented path makes it climbable. Since 1964, the route has been accompanied by a chain that I remember grasping like Linus clutching his security blanket. Eyes closed, taking careful, tentative steps.
"Using the chain is cheating," says Aurelio, looking at this cheater with pity in her lovat eyes.
It's about a mile walk to the rumpled summit where I had found the view to be magnificent, once I coaxed my eyes open. In the distance, 20 miles, seeming a cluster of tomatoes, are the Olgas (Kata Tjuta to the Aborigines), a collection of gigantic granite and basalt rocks, less celebrated than The Rock but more interesting. Too smooth and precipitous for scaling, they're riven by compelling walking trails where butcher birds sing sweetly in wattle trees.
The round trip takes Aurelio 75 minutes as The Rock blushes feverishly in the sun, the tones changing subtly with each hour. Later the sun sets on Uluru spectacularly. The moon appears, and heat lightning flickers across the horizon, on and off like an erratic light bulb. As clouds vanish, the stars make a brilliant appearance, along with Saturn and Jupiter, while Uluru glowers in black, resting up for another overpowering solo as split personality: shrine and curiosity.
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