 |
| Uluru, Australia (Image by Jacqueline Wales from Pixabay) |
Uluru, Australia
Also known as Ayer's Rock, Uluru is a Monolithic Red Stone Massif in Australia's Northern Territories. Sacred to the Aborigines, Uluru Rises from the Barren outback steppe like the dorsal fin of a giant red whale.
The deeply furrowed rock has a thousand stories to tell about its million years of existence. Uluru and the nearby rock formation called Kata Tjuta ("Many Heads") have been part of the Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park since 1977. In 1985, the Australian government officially returned all of it, Uluru and Kata Tjuta included, to the local Northern Territories aboriginal peoples. The national park is their sacred land, the place where the aborigines believe all life came into being a long, long time ago.
Its tremendous size alone would make Uluru a geographical wonder. The red sandstone monolith rises 348 meters from the ground, and its maximum elevation is 869 meters above sea level. The visible part of the rock is 3.4 km long and up to 2 km wide. Its circumference is some 9 km. The red arkosic sandstone was formed some 600 million years ago, forced from the Earth under immense pressure. Mud and gravel were compressed and pushed to the surface at work here must have been stupendous.
- Uluru was placed on the UNESCO World Cultural and World Natural Heritage lists in 1987.
