Uluru:
Fact and
Fiction
Ayers Rock Dreamtime Story
Ayers Rock Dreamtime Story
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The 'Aboriginal Dreamtime' is that part of
aboriginal culture which explains the
origins and culture of the land and its
people.
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Aborigines have the longest continuous
cultural history of any group of people on
Earth - dating back - by some estimates 65,000 years. Dreamtime is Aboriginal
Religion and Culture.
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The Dreamtime contains many parts: It is
the story of things that have happened,
how the universe came to be, how human
beings were created and how the Creator
intended for humans to function within the
cosmos.
Ayers Rock Dreamtime Story
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The expression 'Dreamtime' is most often
used to refer to the 'time before time', or
'the time of the creation of all things', What
is certain is that 'Ancestor Spirits' came to
Earth in human and other forms and the
land, the plants and animals were given
their form as we know them today.
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These Spirits also established relationships
between groups and individuals, (whether
people or animals) and where they travelled
across the land, or came to a halt, they
created rivers, hills, etc., and there are
often stories attached to these places.
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Once their work was done, the Ancestor
Spirits changed again; into animals or stars
or hills or other objects. For Indigenous
Australians, the past is still alive and vital
today and will remain so into the future.
The Ancestor Spirits and their powers have
not gone, they are present in the forms into
which they changed at the end of the
'Dreamtime' or 'Dreaming', as the stories
tell.
Ayers Rock Dreamtime Story
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Australian Aboriginal people know that the
area around Ayers Rock (Mount Uluru) is
inhabited by dozens of ancestral beings whose
activities are recorded at many separate sites.
At each site, the events that took place can be
recounted, whether those events were of
significance or whether the ancestral being just
rested at a certain place before going on.
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Around Ayers Rock (Uluru) there are many
examples of ancestral sites. The Anangu
explanations of these sites and of the
formation of Ayers Rock (Mount Uluru) itself
derive from the Tjukurpa. On the next slide are
some of these stories:
Ayers Rock Dreamtime Story
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Uluru and the Anangu People
Many Aboriginal elders tell stories about
special places around Uluru and animals that
made them. Here is one of those stories from
the Dreamtime.
Long, long ago in the Dreamtime the animals
gave shape to some of the Rock. At that time a
young Woma Python, called Kuniya was
surprised by a group of Liru, which are
venomous snakes. The Liru threw spears at
the python and killed him. So hard did they
throw their spears, that the points made holes
in The Rock. The boy's aunt, called Kuniya,
was so angry that she killed one of the Liru
with her stick. They made holes in the rock
when the points of Kuniya's stick hit it. You can
still see these holes today. Kuniya, the Woma
Python can still be seen as a dark wavy line on
Uluru.
Ayers Rock Dreamtime Story
Tjati tries to retrieve
his kali
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In the creation period,
Tatji, the small Red
Lizard, who lived on
the mulgi flats, came
to Uluru. He threw his
kali, a curved
throwing stick, and it
became embedded in
the surface. He used
his hands to scoop it
out in his efforts to
retrieve his kali,
leaving a series of
bowl-shaped hollows.
Ayers Rock Dreamtime Story
The cave where Tjati
died at Kantju
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Unable to recover
his kali, he finally
died in this cave.
His implements
and bodily
remains survive
as large boulders
on the cave floor.
Ayers Rock Dreamtime Story
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In several caves in Uluru, rock represents
many stories of the Dreamtime. The
paintings are regularly renewed, with layer
upon layer of paint, dating back many
thousands of years.
Ayers Rock - Geology Fact and Fiction
Ayers Rock - A product of Noah’s Flood?
Ayers Rock - Geology Fact and
Fiction
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Figure 1 shows water currents bringing in sand,
supposedly from the Musgrave Ranges to the south.
The sand pours into a very deep water-filled basin
whose floor consists of heavily folded and eroded
older rocks (age of deposition and erosion
unspecified).
Figure 2 shows how a "catastrophic flood" filled in
this basin by dumping:
some 6000 metres (approx. 20, 000 feet) of sand,
probably in only a matter of hours, after having
carried this sand some 100 kilometres (63
miles).
The clear implication here is that the basin seen in
Fig 2 was at least 6000 metres deep!
Since the beds are now standing vertically, it is
also obvious that the sand, after being washed
into the depression, and while still being
compressed and hardened, was pushed up and
tilted by earth movements.
Ayers Rock - Geology Fact and
Fiction
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Figure 3 thus depicts the "sand layers tilted late in Noah's
Flood" with the waters draining off and eroding and
sculpting the massive structure as they went.
Following the retreat of these flood waters, and as the
landscape dried, the material in Ayers Rocks finally
hardened.
So how was it that this sludgy material was held together
high above the flood?
According to Dr Snelling it was not until after the Flood
waters finally subsided that:
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the chemicals in the water between the sand grains
formed a cementing material to bind the mineral
grains together, drying in much the same way as
cement in concrete dries and binds together the
stones and sand mixed with it. With the final retreat of
the waters from off the land, and the continued drying
out of the continent, present day desert wind erosion
has merely pock-marked the surface of the rock.
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Figure 4 shows a cross-section of Ayers Rock today, with
its relationships to the present land surface and desert
sands; the underlying folded and eroded bedrock
conveniently disappears from the scene.
Ayers Rock - Geology Fact and
Fiction
• Uluru (Ayers Rock) is situated in the
Uluru National Park, Northern Territory,
Australia, it is believed to be about 550
million years old. Uluru rises 348
metres from the desert and has a girth
of 9.4 kilometres is the world's most
famous monolith, yet it is estimated that
at least two-thirds of the Rock lies
beneath the surface.
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There is some scientific disagreement about
the origins of Uluru. The most widely held
theory is that both Uluru and Kata Tjuta are
remnants of a vast sedimentary bed which was
laid down some 600 million years ago. The
bed was spectacularly tilted so that Uluru now
protrudes at an angle of up to 85°. The rock is
actually grey but is covered with a distinctive
red iron oxide coating.
Ayers Rock - Geology Fact and
Fiction
 According to Sweet and Crick (1992, Uluru & Kata
Tjuta: A Geological History), about 550 million
years ago erosion from the Petermann Ranges led
to huge alluvial fans (at least 2.5 km in vertical
thickness) being built up by deposits of Arkose
sands from the eroded materials of the adjacent
ranges.
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This close-up view gives an general indication of
the coarse-grained nature of this semimetamorphosed sandstone, which being more
resistant to erosion, has allowed Uluru to remain a
high point in an otherwise largely levelled plain.
Ayers Rock - Geology Fact and
Fiction
 Fifty million years later these alluvial fans were covered by
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sediments when the region became a shallow sea (isostatic
subsidence due to the loading caused by these Arkose sand
deposits playing a role in this process).
Then during the period from c. 400 to c. 300 million years BP,
another uplift (the Alice Springs Orogeny, which created the
Macdonnell Ranges to the north of the Uluru area) caused
massive folding and faulting in the region, causing the formerly
horizontal strata of the Arkose sandstones which comprise Uluru
to be folded
nearly vertically from their former position (i.e., rotated vertically
nearly 90 degrees from their original bedding planes).
Then subsequent erosion over the past 300 million years has led
to the uncovering of the Arkose sandstones which comprise
Uluru and its gradual shaping by erosion into the huge 'monolith'
which we can see there today.
The deposits which previously covered the Arkose sandstones
have largely been eroded away, so that 'The Rock' stands high
over the surrounding desert plain because its rock is more
resistant to erosion than were the rocks which formerly covered
it.
Ayers Rock - Geology Fact and
Fiction
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The rocks which form Uluru were probably
exposed to surface erosion about 70 million
years ago, the landscape being progressively
worn down since then. The diagram below
illustrates the current geology of the area.
To Recap: Erosion of material from a
nearby mountain range lead to huge fluvial
fans (large river features of deposition) this
was covered by a shallow sea, burying the
unsorted sand material. 100milion years
later uplift caused massive folding and
faulting and the rocks were tilted 89
degrees! The softer material around Uluru
which was not subjected to part
metamorphism and is more unconsolidated
has been eroded, leaving the mass of
Arkose Sandstone which makes up the
Uluru monolith today.