Words
- by Roberto Rocha
- published from Australia
- on 2010.05.01
Uluru’s book of sorrows
- Is there a curse on those who take a piece of Uluru?
At an unremarkable corner of the Cultural Center of Uluru, there’s a binder holding hundreds of sorrows, regrets, and apologies.
Read enough of them and they start to sound the same:
I was so enchanted by Uluru that I wanted to take a piece of it home. I realize now that it was wrong. Please return this rock to its rightful place.
The park’s curators call it the “Sorry Book”. The letters come as far as Europe and North America. Most are stained rust red on the corners from the rock that accompanied them.
Uluru, or Ayer’s Rock, is a sacred place to the Anangu, the native people of the Central Australian desert. They believe this giant monolith, which is strikingly unique in the flat desert, was the site of many of their creation mythologies. As such, it holds special powers to them.
So it’s intriguing that so many letters relate tales of misfortune. “Since I took the rock, I lost two people who were very dear to me,” one of them reads. Others detail car accidents, miscarriages, and illnesses. According to one newspaper article on display, one man suffered stomach cramps that were relieved once he mailed back his rock.
One German man, the same newspaper reported, mailed back a five-kilogram piece.
Some of the letters describe in minute detail where the rock was taken from, and ask the park rangers to return it to the exact spot. But the staff keep the rocks in a box until the Aboriginal land owners can conduct a ceremony to replace them.
Of course, not everyone believes in the rock’s supernatural specter. “Think about it,” one incredulous Israeli told me. “How many people who didn’t take a rock also lost relatives and had bad luck?”
Comments
How fate convinced a well-grounded scientist that taking holy rocks home is bad mojo.
http://www.digitalapoptosis.com/archives/hawaii/001549.html
That is indeed freaky, Andre. What kind of bad luck did you have? And did things improve once you mailed it back?
Hi there. I visited Uluru in 1994, and picked up some desert sandclose to Uluru. I brought it home to Denmark (Europe) with me and since then everuthing’s gone wrong. I dropped out of Uni., lost my girlfriend ended up as a homeless living on that street for a year. In 2002 i was diagnosed paranoid schizofrenic. Since then I’ve been in and out of hospitals. At the same time I’ve lost a lot of family members and all my friends have left me because of my illness. I would like to bring the sand back to Uluru, unfortunately I don’t have it anymore. What am I to do? Am I really cursed? Kind Regards Jan Hvedhaven
Jan, if your story is really true, and you believe the sand you took is the cause, maybe you can contact the Aboriginal caretakers of Uluru. Maybe they can forgive you in some way. Good luck,
Hi
I’m French and i like your website. It’s very interesting.
I brought with me a small stone and I want to return to Uluru. Do you know the address where I can send it?
Thank you very much
Caroline
Caroline, I think the best thing to do is ask the park administrators where to send it back. Here are their contacts: http://www.environment.gov.au/parks/uluru/contacts/index.html
I’m glad it all worked out. I’m surrsiped about the print-out couldn’t they just read it off the phone?When we flew to Venice, we went on Air France from LAX, and changed planes at De Gaulle. We followed all the signs directing us to connections and soon found ourselves in a French passport control line! As the line was full of other people being anxious about their connections, we knew that this was where we were supposed to be but how crazy was that? We were’nt going into France, we were simply changing planes for Italy!Anyway, once through we found ourselves literally outside of baggage claim, on the streets we could have taken a cab to Paris!We had to search our way back through the Air France ticket lines to figure out how to make our connection to Venice!On our return we were forewarned our flight from London to Paris with a connection to LAX did indeed require us to go through French security. Lesson learned if you’re changing places at DeGaulle on an international flight, allow more than an hour.
Custom Ad
Leave a comment