Uluru, the Dreamtime and Sacred Space
According to Aboriginal legends, in the mythic period of the beginning of the world known as Alcheringa - the Dreamtime - ancestral beings in the form of totemic animals and humans emerged from the Earth and began to wander over the land. As these Dreamtime ancestors roamed the Earth they created features of the landscape like rivers, caves and rocks through everyday actions like birth, play, singing, fishing, hunting, marriage, and death. At the end of the Dreamtime, these features hardened into stone, and the bodies of the ancestors turned into hills, boulders, caves, lakes, and other distinctive landforms. These places, such as Uluru and Kata Tjuta (the Olgas Mountains) became sacred sites. For more than forty thousand years the Aborigines followed the Dreaming tracks of their ancestors.
During a yearly cycle Aboriginal tribes make journeys, called walkabouts, along the songlines of various totemic spirits, returning year after year to the same traditional routes. As people trod these ancient pilgrimage routes they sang songs that told the myths of the Dreamtime. At the totemic sacred sites, the aborigines performed various rituals to invoke the kurunba, or spirit power of the place. For the aborigines, walkabouts were a way to revist the spirits and a way to experience a living memory of their ancestral Dreamtime heritage.
Uluru is most of the most damous sites in Australia. Uluru even today is still a very important part of Aboriginal lengend and is a very sacred place for them. Even though you can walk up Uluru we should't as a sign of respect to the Aboriginals and to help preserve Uluru.
During a yearly cycle Aboriginal tribes make journeys, called walkabouts, along the songlines of various totemic spirits, returning year after year to the same traditional routes. As people trod these ancient pilgrimage routes they sang songs that told the myths of the Dreamtime. At the totemic sacred sites, the aborigines performed various rituals to invoke the kurunba, or spirit power of the place. For the aborigines, walkabouts were a way to revist the spirits and a way to experience a living memory of their ancestral Dreamtime heritage.
Uluru is most of the most damous sites in Australia. Uluru even today is still a very important part of Aboriginal lengend and is a very sacred place for them. Even though you can walk up Uluru we should't as a sign of respect to the Aboriginals and to help preserve Uluru.