Ayers Rock:

The jewel of Australia

Dear Diary,

After flying around Colombo, I felt like flying abroad again this week. Flying long distance is always fun, when there is a team with you. Otherwise, flying alone is really boring, it’s worse than watching a boring show. You tend to feel tired soon, when there is no one to cheer you up. So, this time I decided that I wouldn’t fly alone.

I have already described Australia, how I visited the Sydney Harbour Bridge and how my birdie relatives helped me. Since there were many more destinations for me to visit, I decided to fly again to the Land of Kangaroos, this time with my family.

We landed there after two days. After speaking to some of our relatives there we decided to visit Ayers Rock. This is also known as Uluru in the Aboriginal language. One of our birdie relatives joined us, as a guide to tell us about the place. He was Shane, oh yes, he was named after Shane Warne, because his parents are cricket fans.

Ayers Rock is a large sandstone rock formation in Central Australia in the Northern Territory. It lies 335 km southwest of the nearest large town. It is located in the Tjuta National Park, which is located 350km southwest of Alice Springs. The first sight of Ayers Rock reminded me of Sigiriya, but unfortunately I couldn’t find out whether this belongs to the same type of rock as Sigiriya.

“This has been identified as the second largest monolith (large single upright block of stone) in the world,” said Shane. “Then, what is the largest?” questioned my little brother. “Australia is the proud owner of the first one too. It’s Mount Augustus,” explained Shane.

Ayers Rock is more than 318km high and the measurement around the rock is 8 km. On July 19, 1873, surveyor William Gosses visited this place and named it Ayers Rock in honour of the then Chief Secretary of South Australia, Sir Henry Ayers. This led to a dispute however.

Ayers Rock was an Aboriginal Sacred site. They used to call it ‘Uluru’. So, on December 15, 1993, The Rock was renamed ‘Ayers Rock Uluru’ and it became the first officially dual-named feature in the Northern Territory. Ayers Rock was described as the ‘remarkable pebble’ by the explorer, Ernest Giles, in 1872.

“Shane, do you know how this Rock was formed?” another question to Shane from Mama Bird. “This is an isolated remnant left after the slow erosion of the original mountain range,” replied Shane. The remarkable feature of Uluru is its homogeneity (same kind) and lack of joining and parting at bedding surfaces, leading to the lack of development of slopes and soil.

There are many fascinating things on this rock. Would you believe that it has many springs, water holes, rock caves and ancient paintings? When you look at it from a distance, it’s just another rock.

You can’t imagine that there would be such things on it. Ayers Rock is composed of coarse-grained arkose, a type of sandstone characterised by an abundance of feldspar and other minerals.

The average composition of this sandstone is 50 per cent feldspar, 25-35 per cent quartz and up to 25 per cent rock fragments. There is another really fascinating feature about this rock. You won’t believe what I’m about to say now. This rock is noted for appearing to change colour as different shades of light strike it at different times of the day and year! At sunset, the rock appears red.

During rainfall, it has a silvery grey colour, with streaks of black algae forming on the areas that serve as channels for water flow. This is like a jewel in Australia. Ayers Rock is listed as a World Heritage Site.