This is not to say that I'm not willing to accept and be interested in the powerful Aboriginal spirituality that surrounds this place. It's just that, being who I am - where and when I was born, tv-as-parent etcetera - what Ayers Rock is most powerfully, richly and irreducibly associated with is Azaria Chamberlain. I truly wish it weren't so, but it is.
I just can't get my mind off the fact that it's probably the first and last reference that pops into the heads of most visiting Australians - our idiotic jokes, our curious, misplaced sympathies, our sheer wonder at the saga have added a whole new urban truth/legend to the spiritual lustre of this place. In time, the Chamberlain story might even be the only one associated with the Rock - and by then, it too will be considered mere myth.
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