The Red Centre: On the new Light Trail through Australia's spiritual heart

Sunday, 21 May 2023

As the sun sets over the more than 300-million-year-old West MacDonnell Ranges, creating a gargantuan rock of red gold, the landscape surrounding us becomes more surreal still.

The blonde spinifex grass that dots Central Australia’s distinctive red dirt acquires golden tips, bushes blush pink and ultraviolet, and giant concentric circles materialise as if by magic against the darkening sky.

Wandering through what must look like a psychedelic dot painting from above, we arrive at a seating area facing a black void.

Intrigued, we join the crowd and watch as the ranges flicker back into view, multicoloured beams of light transforming the 2.5km section in front of us into a rock-hard canvas.

“(Arrernte) country has always been marked by our art and ceremony,” a deep voice declares as pink, blue and yellow discs dance over the ranges and the ghost gum trees at their feet change colour like tall, pale, bushy-haired chameleons.

“The town has been mapped and our stories are now told,” our invisible guide to this strange new world says as the electronic dance beats gain pace.

The creation stories and culture of the Arrernte Aboriginal people, custodians of Alice Springs and its surrounds for tens of thousands of years, are always written on the landscape but, at Parrtjima - A Festival in Light, they become clearer still.

Combining light displays, artworks, live music, dance, talks and workshops, the free annual festival is a 10-day celebration of Indigenous culture. Held in Alice Springs Desert Park, it attracts people from around Australia and beyond as, Parrtjima curator Rhoda Roberts says, Australians and others seek to learn more about the oldest living culture on Earth.

Our group of three Kiwi women arrives in Alice, as the locals call it, on a delayed flight and, feeling more than slightly frazzled, we make a beeline for what our guide tells us is one of the prettiest waterholes in the West Macs.

Crawling like the giant caterpillars Arrernte stories say created them for almost 200km, the West Macs are the first big natural attraction on classic Outback road trip the Red Centre Way. Linking Alice and Watarrka/Kings Canyon with fellow geological gems Uluru and Kata Tjuta, the complete loop is 1140km, but we shave off a few hundred by flying out of Ayers Rock Airport instead of returning to Alice.

For Indigenous Australians, the landscape - or country - serves as a tangible reminder of the creation stories that have been passed down from generation to generation, and the laws that still guide them today.

As cultural knowledge must be earned, not all stories are shared with visitors, but those that are help explain their strong connection to country which, seen as deeply spiritual and symbolic, is intrinsic to their identity and sense of belonging.

The many natural and cultural treasures in the West Macs include Arrernte-owned Standley Chasm, a sacred 80-metre-wide gorge with walls which burn red in the midday sun, and Simpsons Gap, the mythological home of a group of giant goanna Arrernte ancestors which is now a great place to spot black-footed rock wallaby.

We only have time for Ormiston Gorge, about a 90-minute drive from Alice. Up to 14 metres deep, the waterhole reflects the red rock walls and khaki-coloured plants that surround it, some of which are remnants from its tropical past. Crossing the sandy beach and diving in, I feel like I’m in another oversized dot painting – this time in liquid form.

Setting out for Watarrka, about 350km southwest of Alice, the next morning after spending the evening at Parrtjima, we drive long, lonely roads through scenery characteristic of the Red Centre: tall, black-trunked desert oaks, ghost gums and far more other leafy plants than I had expected rising from that distinctive red dirt. On several occasions we spot the wild camels that make themselves a nuisance in these parts, and flocks of bright green budgies fly overhead.

Rising like a bronzed phoenix from the otherwise flat landscape, Watarrka is Australia’s Grand Canyon, and its scale quickly becomes clear on a 15-minute scenic helicopter ride. Hurtling over its 300-metre-high sandstone walls, we peer down at weathered sandstone domes that look like the ruins of an ancient city, and into the deep gash that forms the Garden of Eden, a hidden refuge for rare and relict plants.

After rejuvenating baths overlooking a red escarpment at Discovery Kings Canyon Resort, we wash down bush tucker-inspired canapés with Aussie wines and craft beers on a wooden platform overlooking the canyon as the sun sets and its fiery walls fade to black. As they do, a cluster of rainbow-coloured columns comes into focus, and we wander down to walk among them.

The brainchild of British/Australian Artist Bruce Munro, creator of the famous Field of Light at Uluru, the new Light Towers installation is made up of 69 two-metre-high towers which change colour in time to a mesmerising vocal soundtrack combining voices from different cultures.

Watching the fibre optic cables in the glass bottles that form the towers flicker from cool to warm colours and back again, a cartoonishly large, yellow moon overhead, I am reminded of this year’s theme at Parrtjima: Listening with heart. Like the works at the festival, this one seems to invite us to connect with others and the environment with compassion. To make an effort to fully appreciate what they are telling us and, in doing so, enlighten ourselves.

We get a close-up view of Watarrka on the 6km Canyon Rim Walk the next morning, climbing the sandstone staircase to its rim as the rising sun sleepily sets it aglow. A highlight is descending to the Garden of Eden, where dinosaur-era cycads fed by a sacred reflective waterhole create an illusion of a desert oasis (the semi-arid landscape receives too much rainfall to qualify as a real desert).

We ride buggies around the 2200sqkm camel and cattle station Kings Creek and fall asleep to the sound of howling dingoes in glamping tents overlooking the George Gill Range before hitting the road to Uluru, just under a three-hour drive away, and watching the red dirt give way to red sand.

We get intimate with Australia’s biggest rockstar on a bike ride along the 10.6km trail that hugs the dual Unesco World Heritage site’s base.

As we follow the flat, dirt track with our audio guides, we listen to tales of Tjukurpa, the long-go period when ancestors of the Anangu, Uluru’s traditional custodians, are said to have created the known world through their travels along trails that cross and re-cross the desert.

Evidence of these ancestors is everywhere. There is the deep cave where Mala men were said to have been murdered after offending a group of strangers. The hidden waterhole where Kuniya, the warrior woma python, reputedly killed the head of the Liru snakes in an act of vengeance. And the dark stains that tell of the blaze that engulfed blue-tongued lizard Lungkata as he fled hunters who chased him down after he ate an emu they had speared.

Uluru, we learn, is an 85-storey-high history book and self-help guide - its stories offering time-tested counsel on how to live well.

We gain a more abstract insight into Indigenous culture at GoCA (Gallery of Central Australia), a small but impactful display of works by artists from surrounding communities, before being bussed to the secluded desert site that hosts the Territory’s most illuminating dining experience.

After downing glasses of sparkling wine as the sun sets over Uluru, which changes in colour from rich pink at dawn to orange at midday and ochre at sunset in its own natural light show, we take seats at white linen-covered tables set up in the sand.

Serenaded by a didgeridoo, we pile our plates with dishes from the bush tucker-inspired buffet, which include tender marinated crocodile, barramundi with lemon myrtle cream, desert lime cheesecake, and apple crumble infused with tangy outback superfood quandong.

As Uluru’s now near-midnight tones merge with the spectacularly star-studded night sky, a psychedelic tulip field springs up beneath it, stretching almost as far the eye can see.

Wandering through the famous Field of Light installation, the solar-powered bulbs throwing off a spectrum of desert hues, I am reminded that the Red Centre as a whole is an epic gallery, the artworks along the “Light Trail” forming just a small part of the broader cultural canvas.

The Light Trail now also includes light and sound show Wintjiri Wiru, which means “beautiful view out to the horizon” in the Anangu language.

The show sees more than 1000 drones create images over Uluru which illustrate an ancient feud between the Mala people and the mulga-seed men. The display also involves laser lights, narration in the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara languages, and recordings of traditional ceremonies from the local Anangu community.

Wintjiri Wiru isn’t included in our itinerary, but we experience another of the Territory’s spectacular natural light shows on a sunrise camel ride just outside Yulara, the closest town to Uluru, on our final morning.

Cresting a dune to find ourselves looking straight at the fabled monolith, the sky a riot of pink, purple and gold, I feel I’m beginning to fully appreciate why the Red Centre is referred to as Australia’s spiritual heart. You can sense, as well as hear tale of, its origin stories here. When you visit, remember to do as the Parrtjimer folk would advise and “listen with heart”.

Fact file:

Getting there: Qantas operates indirect flights from New Zealand to Ayers Rock Airport and Alice Springs. See: qantas.com

Staying and playing there: Rooms at Crowne Plaza Alice Springs Lasseters start from just over A$300 (NZ$319) a night. See: crowneplaza.com

Deluxe rooms with private balconies and bathtubs at Discovery Kings Canyon resort cost from A$480 a night. The Light-Towers at Sunset experience, which includes drink and canapes costs A$85 per person. See: discoveryholidayparks.com.au.

A night’s accommodation at the Drovers Dream glamping tents at Kings Creek Station costs A$675, which also includes a self-cook barbecue dinner and buffet breakfast. See: kingscreekstation.com.au

Rooms at Sails in the Desert, near Uluru, start from A$475 a night. The Field of Light dinner costs from A$280 per adult and A$140 per child, while the Wintjiri Wiru After Dark experience costs from A$190 per adult and A$95 per child.

The writer was hosted by Tourism NT.