Hey everyone, welcome to World Heritage Journey.
Today, we're at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, in central Australia.
So you probably recognise the massive red rock behind me: Uluru, a symbol of Australia.
I'm super excited to check this one out, so let's get moving!
This World Heritage Site has two components: Uluru, and a nearby rock formation known as
Kata Tjuta.
Together, they're listed as a rare Mixed site, important for both cultural and natural reasons.
Starting with Uluru, it's genuinely one of the most impressive natural formations I've
ever seen.
It's an enormous single rock made of sandstone, rising 348 metres above the surrounding desert.
Amazingly, what we can see is actually just the top of the rock - it continues deep underground.
Nobody knows how deep it goes, but it's estimated to be at least five kilometres!
Back on the ground, the rock's circumference is a full 9 1/2 kilometres, and walking an
entire lap around the base takes several hours in the desert heat.
It's challenging, but very rewarding!
Geologists estimate the Rock's age at around 500 million years, which is honestly just staggering.
But despite the impressive numbers, I think my favourite aspect of the Rock is that for
something so massive and unchanging, it's actually constantly changing.
From a distance, it looks like just one enormous slab of rock - which it is, but as you draw
closer, you see more and more details emerge.
Small cracks become huge gorges, hundreds of metres long.
Tiny pock-marks become enormous, house-sized caves, and little streaks turn into enormous stains
left by gushing waterfalls in the rainy season.
And all around the base, completely hidden until you're up close, is a constant procession
of boulders, caves, overhangs and waterholes.
Even the colour constantly changes. When we first arrived on a gloomy, overcast
afternoon, the rock was grey and dull.
But later on, during a glorious sunset and sunrise, it turned a magnificent shade of luminous orange.
But Uluru is as fascinating culturally as it is geologically.
The local Aboriginal people are the Anangu, who've lived in the area for over ten thousand years.
As you'd expect, Uluru is an extremely sacred and spiritual place in their culture and many
of their creation stories, moral lessons and ritual ceremonies are centred around the rock.
One great example is the story of Lungkata, a greedy and dishonest blue-tongue lizard
who stole a wounded emu from some local hunters and lied to them about it.
Realising they'd been deceived, the hunters tracked Lungkata and smoked him out of his
cave, high on Uluru's western face.
As he fell and crashed to his death below, he left a trail of smoke and ash on the rock
that can still be seen today.
The story of course teaches what happens to the greedy and dishonest.
There's also a series of caves at the foot of the rock covered in paintings, where creation
stories and other lessons are taught to the younger generations.
About 30 kilometres west of Uluru lies Kata Tjuta, another sandstone rock formation.
Although similar to Uluru, Kata Tjuta is also surprisingly different - it consists of 36
large sandstone domes, rather than just being a single rock.
It also covers a much larger area of nearly 22 square kilometres.
The highest peak is also taller than Uluru, at 546 metres, versus 348 for Uluru.
One major geological difference is in the rock strata: at Kata Tjuta the strata is mostly
horizontal, inclined at about 30 degrees, while the rock strata at Uluru is almost entirely
vertical, which is what gives it those iconic ribs.
There's also just a really different feeling out at Kata Tjuta. Since it's an hour's drive
from Uluru, a lot of visitors don't make it out there, and hiking the long Valley of the
Winds leaves you almost entirely alone with nature, which is just a fantastic, almost
spiritual feeling.
As you'd expect, Kata Tjuta is also very sacred to the local Anangu, perhaps even more so
than Uluru.
Because of this, many of their Tjukurpa creation stories are still kept secret among the
tribe and not told to outsiders like me.
All up, Uluru-Kata Tjuta is one of the most impressive World Heritage sites that we've
ever visited, and it's one that we'd strongly recommend visiting for yourself.
It really is an experience unlike any other.