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How Uluru Was Formed


Uluru



The Two Boys were hunting and traveling together from what is now South Australia. They became intrigued by the sound of the Mala Wallaby people holding an inma (a religious ceremony) around a rock hole that is now part of Kantju Gorge on the north-west face of Uluru. The Two Boys traveled toward the ceremony to see what was happening. They were uninitiated and had no knowledge of men's ceremonies. They were curious.

The Mala, meanwhile, were separating into their men's and women's camps preparing for the inma the next morning. The Mala were in a dilemma. Shortly after they arrived and began their inma, another people arrived from the west with an invitation to join their inma. The Mala had to refuse because they had previously planted a pole in the ground, and from that moment everything had become a part of their ceremony.

Now, prior to the inma, even everyday jobs, like hunting, gathering and preparing food, collecting water, talking to people or just waiting, had to be done in a proper way. This has been the law for men, women and children ever since. But for the Mala to refuse would anger the people from the west.

The Mala continued their preparations. When they were not dancing, the women gathered food for the whole group. The women's camp was at Taputji, the small isolated dome on the north-east side of Uluru. One of their digging sticks can still be seen here, where it was transformed into stone. The Mala were soon interrupted by a savage, black dog-like creature called Carping. It was an evil spirit created by the insulted westerners.

Carping attacked and killed many Mala men, women and children. In terror, the remaining Mala fled to the south with Carping chasing them. When people trek along the base of the north face of Uluru, the Analog believe, they are surrounded by the Mala Jatropha.

During the Mala preparations the Two Boys began playing at the waterhole, mixing water with the surrounding earth. They piled up the mud, higher and higher, until it was the size that Uluru is today. Then they started playing on it. They sat on the top and slid down the south side of their mud pile on their bellies, dragging their fingers through the mud in long channels. The channels have since hardened into stone and now form the many gullies on the southern side of Uluru. The Two Boys' play was interrupted when Carping attacked and pursued the Mala.

The Two Boys managed to escape Carping's wrath. They resumed their hunting and searching for water, turning north toward Mount Conner. One boy threw his wooden club at a hare wallaby, but the club struck the ground and made a freshwater spring. (The dream ancestors' creative power could be directed through their artifacts.) This boy refused to tell the other where he had found the water, and the other boy nearly died of thirst. They fought and made their way to the tabletopped Mount Conner.

Their bodies are preserved on the summit as boulders.