Heritage in Oceania / Australia

Uluru–Kata Tjuta National Park

Uluru is a 348-metre sandstone inselberg in the centre of Australia, rising abruptly from the flat red desert of the Northern Territory like a geological anomaly that demands explanation. It is 9.4 kilometres in circumference, and most of its mass extends underground. To the Anangu people, the traditional custodians of this landscape, Uluru is not a rock formation with cultural significance attached to it. It is the materialised record of the Tjukurpa, the Anangu law and creation narrative, written in geology at the Dreaming. Every feature of its surface corresponds to a specific event in the creation story. The site is simultaneously one of the most recognisable natural formations on earth and one of the most sacred places in Aboriginal Australian spiritual geography.