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WONDERS OF NATURE
Irex Rock. Nature miracle
The road spreads along the endless and lifeless plain. Behind one and a half thousand kilometers of the way to the heart of the Australian deserts - the town of Alice Springs, and from it - another four hundred kilometers to the south-southwest, to the outskirts of Australia's most impregnable Gibson Desert. Left behind the low Flinders Ridge, the shores of Gardner and Eyre lakes bordered by a white strip of salt, and the sandy ridges of the Simpson Desert stretching to the horizon, in places covered with thickets of thorny bushes - scrub. But the main thing that remains in the memory of the last two days of the car trip is the monotonous, absolutely flat flatness of the surrounding landscape: reddish-brown sands with rare bushes of thorny grass - spinifex. The monotony of the road is broken only by rare bridges over dry riverbeds - screams filled with water for a day or two only once every few years, when the wet season is especially heavy with rain. Against this background, a gigantic chocolate-brown rock suddenly appears on the horizon, which becomes more and more grandiose as it approaches it, all the more miraculous. Ayers Rock (this is the name of this unique stone hill) is probably the largest rock monolith in the world. Its oval hump, 2,4 kilometers long and 1,6 kilometers wide, rises 350 meters above the surrounding plain! There was a lot of controversy about its origin at the time. The mystery of the emergence of a huge mountain range in the middle of an endless, flat, like a table, desert gave rise to a lot of the most incredible assumptions, such as the fact that this is a giant iron meteorite that fell on the plain thousands of years ago.
But later geologists explained the appearance of Ayers Rock in a much more prosaic way, which, of course, did not make it less impressive, although, perhaps, it became less mysterious. According to modern science, Ayers Rock is a typical product of erosion - the never-ending process of the destruction of high relief by natural forces and the transformation of rugged terrain into a plain. At the same time, more durable rock masses that survived are called remnants by scientists. They can be found in the Sahara on the Tibesti plateau in our Northern Urals, in Arabia and in the US state of Georgia in the famous Monument Valley. A typical remnant is the well-known Mount Sugar Loaf in Rio de Janeiro. However, Ayers Rock undoubtedly overshadows any of them both in its size and the impression of absolute unreality that arises at the sight of a huge rock reigning over a plain that stretches for hundreds of kilometers around. The first European to see Ayers Rock was the Australian explorer Ernest Giles, who then crossed the Gibson Desert from north to south in 1872. However, the local Aboriginal tribes by that time had known this rock for many centuries. They called it Uluru ("The place where there is a shadow") and annually gathered near it for ritual festivities. Some tribes believed that the rock fell from the sky in ancient times, others attributed its appearance to the giants who created it even before the arrival of people in this country, and still others believed that Uluru was the abode of the Wanambi Rainbow Serpent, the supreme judge over all living on Earth. It was at the behest of Vanambi that his servants created humans and populated the desert with them. The children of Uluru multiplied and laid the foundation for all the aboriginal tribes, and every year they came to the sacred mountain to glorify the best hunters and gain courage for new feats. Time and natural forces have worked hard on the surface of the rock, leaving notches and scars on it, and even large recesses of the most bizarre shape. Giant, animal-like footprints, dents on a strong stone gave rise to many legends and beliefs among superstitious indigenous Australians. Traces on the rock, according to the natives, were left by the monstrous huge dog Kura-Punya, sneaking towards the hunters' camp in order to devour them all without a trace. Only the help of a constant friend of people - a cheerful kookaburra bird, which with its cry warned people about the approach of a terrible beast, saved their lives. The kookaburra, or gull bird, is still one of Australia's favorite birds. Her cheerful cry, similar to human laughter, begins the morning broadcasts of Australian radio. In the caves at the foot of the cliff, many Aboriginal ritual drawings have been preserved, and without exaggeration it can be called the main center of the primitive culture of the indigenous people of Australia. The dimensions of the caves are impressive: the largest of them reach eight hundred meters in length and thirty meters in height. Three lakes formed in them, filled during the rainy season with water seeping through the cracks of the rock. In the hot summer, when all the springs in the area dried up, the natives found here shelter from the hot rays of the sun and life-giving moisture. But some lakes and caves were considered forbidden and protected from ancient times by sacred taboos. So, all the locals believed that Lake Mutijula would bring inevitable death to any daredevil who dared to swim in its waters. After all, it was here that the Rainbow Serpent Vanambi himself chose as his place of residence and, so as not to be disturbed, poisoned the lake with the magical poison of Aran-Gulta, from which there is no escape. Other caves already by their name (like "The Grotto of the Cut Throat") scared away the curious. Involuntary trembling caused people and repeated booming echo in the Cave of Laughter. And dark as night, Putta Grotto was inhabited, as the legend said, by the spirits of dead children, waiting for the moment when they could move into a new, just born body of a child. Along the steep slope of the mountain, a narrow path leads to its summit. Not everyone can overcome a risky climb, although metal railings have now been installed in the most dangerous places. To the purely climbing difficulties, there is also the need to carry a supply of water in a capacious flask - otherwise the climber will face death from dehydration or sunstroke. From the height of Ayers Rock, a panorama of a vast desert, almost devoid of vegetation, opens up. Only at the foot of the cliff do rare groves of stunted eucalyptus and acacia-mulga grow green. A few kangaroos and emus nibbling at spinifex's thorny shoots as they move leisurely across the red, heat-cracked plain. In the distance, the bizarre massif of Mount Olga is blue through the air haze. Before him in a straight line 24 kilometers. Rare here, but heavy downpours carved deep furrows-gorges in it, breaking the massif into thirty rounded remnants. The aborigines gave Mount Olga the apt name Katajuta ("Mountain with many heads"). On the opposite side, the silhouette of Mount Connor, located twice as far, barely emerges. Unlike Mount Olga and Ayers Rock, it has a flat top. Covered with gray-green grass, this peak, when viewed from an airplane, contrasts sharply with its neighbors. Now the Ayers Rock area has been declared a National Park, and the flow of tourists who want to see the unique rock is growing every year. Despite the remoteness and inaccessibility of this corner of Australia, located in the very center of the continent, people on cars and planes get here to admire the beauty of the extraordinary landscape, which cannot be found anywhere else in the world. Of course, there are many beautiful and amazing places in the mountains and deserts of Australia and along its coast. These are the Great Barrier Reef with its fabulous inhabitants, and the picturesque Blue Mountains, in the depths of which the two hundred-kilometer system of the Jenolan caves is hidden, and the protected Kangaroo Island and Shark Bay, and the cool coniferous groves and waterfalls of the island of Tasmania, and the ghost lakes of Western Australia, every year disappearing, only to reappear in another place... Tourists coming to a distant continent from around the world are enchanted by the underwater coral multicolor of the Barrier Reef or the grandeur of the cave halls of Genolam, where the grotto of the Devil's Carriage Shed reaches a height of one hundred meters! And yet, after enjoying the spectacle of these beauties, talking with friendly kangaroos and koalas in the national parks of the coast, an inquisitive traveler will certainly insert a new film into the camera and set off along the dusty highway that runs along the border of the Great Victoria Desert and the Simpson Desert. His path will not be easy and not close. The Main Miracle of Australia, hidden in the depths of the Great Deserts, is not soon revealed to man. But all difficulties and road fatigue are forgotten in that unique evening moment, when the surrounding plain has already plunged into darkness, and only the majestic hump of Ayers Rock glows with a giant fiery drop in the rays of sunset against the dark, almost black night sky of the tropics. Author: B.Wagner
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