Rock / Uluru

348 metres

The location where Uluru stands was an area where sand was deposited during the rapid erosion of surrounding mountains around 600 million years ago. “After this period of rapid mountain building and erosion the centre of Australia turned into an inland sea…

Rising dramatically from the Central Australian desert, the huge red rock of Uluru is one of Australia’s most iconic attractions. Formerly known as Ayers Rock, Uluru is made of sandstone about half a billion years old. It stands 348 metres high and has a circumference of 9.4 km.

Uluru is a type of rock called arkose. The flakes are bits of rock left after water and oxygen have decayed minerals in the rock. The red is the rusting of iron found naturally in arkose, and the grey is the rock’s original colour. You can see Uluru’s original grey inside many of its caves.

Chemical weathering occurs when conditions change the materials that make up the rock and soil. Australia happens to have a perfect environment, hot and dry, for a particular form of chemical weathering called oxidation. The oxides produced through this process give the ground its reddish hue.

Contrary to popular opinion, it is Mount Augustus, and not Uluru, which is the largest rock in the world. Rising 717m above the flat plains which surround it, Mount Augustus covers an area of 4,795 hectares, making it one-and-a-half times larger than Uluru (3,330 hectares).

It has been a significant landmark to Aboriginal people since the Beginning. The natural landmark is thought to have been formed by ancestral beings during the Dreaming. According to the local Aboriginal people, Uluru’s numerous caves and fissures were all formed due to ancestral beings actions in the Dreaming.

It destroys the environment Even despite the Anangu people’s wish, thousands of tourists continue to climb the rock. This causes millions of footprints to trek up the climbing path. Causing the area to slowly become eroded, changing the complete face of Uluru.

In 2017, the board of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park voted unanimously to end the climb because of the spiritual significance of the site, as well as for safety and environmental reasons. One Anangu man told the BBC that Uluru was a “very sacred place, [it’s] like our church”.

about 500 million years

Uluru is the most iconic natural landform in Australia — and its formation is an equally special story of creation, destruction and reinvention. The rocky material that ultimately became Uluru and Kata Tjuta was in one of the mountain ranges formed — the Petermann Ranges.

Uluru

The Anangu Aborigines believe this space is actually hollow but it contains an energy source and marks the spot where their ‘dreamtime’ began. They also believe that area around Uluru is the home of their ancestors and is inhabited by many ancestral ‘beings’.

A stunning image of Uluru has shown the sacred site as you’ve never seen it before by capturing it from the International Space Station. “Not easy to spot from the International Space Station, but as the Sun went down, we got lucky!” Pesquet added.

2.5km

According to the park’s most recent data, 300,000 people visited Uluru in 2015, of whom 16.2% climbed the rock — roughly 135 a day. The spike in visitor numbers to the UNESCO World Heritage-listed rock has coincided with school holidays in Australia.

Uluru is big, but most of its mass is buried under the surrounding desert. Uluru as we see it today was created by millions of years of erosion of the softer surrounding rock. Beneath the surface, Uluru extends at least another 2.5kms.

Uluru/Ayers Rock rises 1,142 feet (348 metres) above the surrounding desert plain and reaches a height 2,831 feet (863 metres) above sea level. The monolith is oval in shape, measuring 2.2 miles (3.6 km) long by 1.5 miles (2.4 km) wide, with a circumference of 5.8 miles (9.4 km).

ɻʊ]), also known as Ayers Rock (/ˌɛərz -/, like airs) and officially gazetted as Uluru / Ayers Rock, is a large sandstone rock formation in the southern part of the Northern Territory in Australia. It lies 335 km (208 mi) south west of the nearest large town, Alice Springs.

about 118 years and 8 months

When to see the Colours As the sun makes its way over the rock, it transforms back to its original rusty orange hue. The fun begins again when the sun hits the rock on its way down, changing from sizzling red and back to orange again. This spectacle is the most popular time in Uluru National Park.

Uluru is an ancient sandstone monolith in Central Australia, famous for its gorgeous auburn hue, which seems to change with changing seasons and time of day. It is one of Australia’s prime tourist attractions.

The rock is made of sandstone infused with minerals like feldspar (Arkosic sandstone) that reflect the red light of sunrise and sunset, making it appear to glow. The rock gets its rust color from oxidation. Uluru is sacred to the Aborigines and has many varied springs, waterholes, rock caves and ancient paintings.

Ever since Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park was handed back to its traditional owners in 1985, the park has been jointly managed by Anangu and the Australian Government. Anangu work with Parks Australia (a part of the Department of the Environment and Energy) to manage and care for the national park.

Five million hectares of land around Uluru in the Northern Territory is to be declared an Indigenous Protected Area (IPA), allowing traditional owners to better preserve sites of cultural significance. …

It is estimated that Kakadu and Uluru-Kata Tjuta national parks alone contribute more than $320 million a year to regional economies in the Northern Territory, with about 740 jobs either directly or indirectly associated with park visitation (Gillespie Economics and BDA Group 2008).

37 people have