Digital Files to Keep the Rock of Ages

          Rusty red against an azure sky or occasionally purple and streaked with waterfalls, Uluru is the icon of the Outback. Millions of visitors come every year to wonder at the natural cathedral that, for tens of thousands of years, has been sacred to the Aboriginal people. Around the base, over ninety rock art sites tell in ash and ochre their creation stories – tales of snakes, emus and even giant dogs. Modern man and the elements threaten the delicate frescos but a new computer system offers hope of preserving the ancient art of the Rock.

          I was lucky to see some of the paintings in the company of Mick Starkey, a park ranger and senior man of the Anangu people.

“The colours in rock art – that’s ochre,” he said. “We use a red ochre, white ochre and a yellow ochre. That grey one we see, that’s ash from fire.

“Ochre in old times was like gold, especially if it was nice and red and strong. You could trade it for weapons, for spear or boomerang. Trade the ochre and come back and sit down and draw on the walls in the rock shelters – nice and shady – paint and teach stories to the children.”

The story before us concerned Mala, the Wallaby.

“There’s a little figure here,” said Mick. “Little ears, two little eyes and a nose.

“Mala people came here and they were camping here and two people from Western Australia came and asked the Mala bosses if they would take the ceremony to Western Australia. They refused to take the ceremony there and so they went back and told their bosses. So they sent a big spirit dog, bigger than Uluru, sent him in revenge to eat all the Mala bosses.”

I was finding it hard to get my mind round this.

“You mean a dog bigger than the Rock came to eat these Wallaby men?”

“Came to eat them, to destroy the law,” said Mick. “And the evidence is on the Rock today. When you go to the northern side, you can see where the dog actually, physically come down and started eating the bosses. You can see his footprints going up and down. He’s trying to pull them out of the holes and he’s trying to break the law, finish the law.”

I asked Mick what Aboriginal people meant by law. He said it controlled every aspect of their lives, guiding them to hunt in the correct seasons, pick bush tucker when it was ripe and perform their ceremonies at the right time. Knowledge had been passed down orally, from generation to generation.

“It’s handed down through song and dance,” he said. “It’s on the rock art, it’s in the landscape. It’s like other Indigenous people round the world, like American Indians, like Africans. They’ve got a law and religion same, same structure.”

Mick compares the Rock to a cathedral, holding the spirits of his ancestors. But sadly, not all visitors treat this sacred site with respect. Every week, large padded envelopes of so-called “sorry rocks” land on Mick’s desk, with letters from far and wide telling of the bad luck that befell tourists who broke the eco-traveller’s code: “Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but photographs.”

Worse, Uluru or Ayers Rock, as the white settlers called it, is actually damaged by graffiti and vandalism. Every week, Leroy Lester heads out through the scrub, armed with cotton wool and thin, sharp sticks, to inspect the rock art sites and use his tools to repair scratches and remove graffiti.

“Over the years, this site has had a lot of damage done to it,” he said. “Old bus drivers, white explorers, used to chuck water on the paintings to make the colour stand out. See, today it’s all…there’s nothing left. And see a couple of scratchings there on that circle? See, that’s a bit of vandalism there.”

“Some modern person really added those marks?” I asked.

“Yeah, just scratched it, you know.”

I asked him if the vandals ever went so far as to use spray cans.

“Yes, that happened once before. Just putting, you know, his name, Big Dave, or something like that. And we looked at the visitor book and saw “Big Dave” in there and an address and everything. So that’s how we busted him. They just rang him up and put the law enforcement officers onto him and he was picked up, yeah.”

Leroy admits he is fighting a losing battle. What Big Dave started will be finished off by hot desert winds, rare bursts of rain and the occasional kangaroo, rubbing up against the rock to escape the heat. The Anangu know the paintings won’t last forever but they are a resourceful people. While continuing to inhabit their traditional world of ceremony, ancestry and law, they are also taking advantage of white men’s science and technology to preserve their heritage. With Cliff Ogleby of the University of Melbourne, they have devised a computer system to record their art, stories and ceremonies.

“It’s what some people would call a keeping place,” said Cliff. “There is a men’s keeping place and a women’s keeping place, where things that are important to them are looked after. In this case, it happens to be digital versions of plans and photographs and videos and sound and the things that are a little more ephemeral than rocks.”

I was puzzled as to how modern computer technology could be reconciled with concerns Indigenous people have about separating men’s and women’s business.

“It’s not as difficult as it might first sound,” said Cliff. “For people here who are engaged with their culture, they have absolutely no desire to sneak a look at the women’s stuff. So that in itself is a security system. The other concern was that maybe other people who weren’t from here might want to sneak a look at it. So we’ve had to develop a fairly secure login system that brings your photo up. So if anyone sees that’s not your photo on the screen, they know it’s not you.”

I was still sceptical that the older members of the Aboriginal community would get to grips with this alien medium.

“Almost the complete opposite,” said Cliff. “We have been doing this at their request. These are people who drive Toyota troopies and have mobile phones and when they’re on fire-fighting duty, go out there with GPS and radios. Technology is not alien and never has been. This is just a different sort of technology.”

As night falls, we sit under the stars, cooking turkey on a campfire with the black mass of the Rock behind us. Conversation turns to the younger Anangu and how the computer system may help to re-engage them with their culture. Substance abuse is a problem here. Mick Starkey believes the new computer can provide an answer.

“We’ve got distractions and the main distractions are substance abuse,” he said. It’s a kind of disease. I don’t really like talking about it. Young people are hooked on various substances and it causes a lot of destruction in the community. A lot of old people feel disheartened about it because the younger generation is our future, so it’s something we have to look at.

“At the moment, we’re trying to readjust ourselves and use Western technology in a really good way. We’ve got people like Cliff that are really there to help us. The computer will teach them (the kids) new skills and hopefully we can get them into traineeships in the park, give them a future. Hopefully the computer will put them back on the right track to preserve culture.”

 Sharon Mascall