from September 2004
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World Legacy Awards 2004
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To most people, Uluru is one of the world's great stone monoliths, 1,142 feet high and six miles around, the icon of Australia's Red Center. But for the Anangu ("we people"), this rock is the heart of a region where they have lived for over 20,000 years and to which they finally regained title in 1985.
After watching a chill dawn bathe Uluru in ever changing shades of red and orange, our group follows Wilson along the Liru Track, weaving through clumps of spinifex grass and silvery green bushes to the base of the rock. As we walk, Wilson explains Tjukurpa, "creation law," which underpins the Anangu culture. It tells how the world was born and defines relationships between people and land. When Anangu look at the vertical face of Uluru, they are looking at Tjukurpa, literally. Where outsiders see rock, Anangu see spear marks, footprints, and ancestral beings turned to stone, such as Lungkata (Blue Tongue Lizard Man) or Kuniya (Python).
Anangu don't climb the rock; that's contrary to Tjukurpa. Instead, guides lead tours on paths their ancestors walked, interpreting cave paintings and explaining foods and medicines—how to make bread from the naked woollybutt grass seed, where to find bush plums, how to treat sore muscles and colds with a native fuschia, irramunga.
They teach bush skills: firemaking, spear throwing, and how to make kiti (glue). With a stick, Wilson pounds some gummy spinifex grasses, separates small, gray resin particles from the leaves, and then heats the resin in a fire, producing a black gum used in making tools.
Afterward, an intent little blond girl from Sydney poses for a photograph holding a wooden spear and crowned with a large bowl balanced Anangu-style on her head. "This tour," her mother notes, "is one of the few ways in this area to experience Aboriginal culture."
As an Aborigine-owned company that employs local people, builds pride in the culture, and supports an Aboriginal school, Anangu Tours heralds a new, needed trend. Indigenous communities worldwide have long endured visits by outsider-owned tour outfitters that use nonindigenous guides and leave little behind but small change for souvenirs.
Still, Anangu remains the exception, not yet the rule. From the Liru Track we can just make out the line of conventional tourists high on the rock, silhouetted against the sun. Tens of thousands of visitors climb Uluru each year, despite Anangu requests that they refrain. "Do you think they're learning anything about my people, our religion, and the law of the land?" Wilson asks, smiling, and turns his face to the top of the rock. "We don't have any Tjukurpa up there."
—Francis Wilkins Anangu Tours, Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park, Northern Territory, Australia; +618 8956 2123.
»Hotels & Resorts
Casuarina Beach Club, BarbadosExperiencing a sun-kissed, palm-fringed Caribbean beach for the first time can be like getting religion. Little wonder, then, that resort hotels are a dime a dozen in the island-dotted Caribbean region. Not so common are resorts that help protect their coastal environment, and even less so resorts that engage the authentic life of the island. Casuarina Beach Club, on Barbados's south coast, does both.
During a recent stay there, I noted recycling bins in every room and corridor. Local fine art hung on the walls. And on Barbados's Independence Day, which coincided with my stay, school-kids in uniforms came and presented Bajan (Barbadian) songs and poetry.
Casuarina's community involvement benefits Bajans—such as wheelchair-bound Muriel Jordan, who sells flowers in the lobby from a cart that the resort donated to her—and visitors, who get impromptu invitations to play cricket or soccer with a pick-up team of sports-loving locals.
"Some of us on staff, if we are going out for a Friday evening, we'll take along guests and go fishing, go to a rum shop, have drinks, play some pool, and then bring the guests back," says Loreto Duffy-Mayers, the resort's environmental manager.
Casuarina has been a leader in sustainable practices since it opened in 1981. The resort retained much of the original on-site forest, Dover Woods, and has since added to it. Buildings are engulfed in palms, frangipani, mahogany trees, and hibiscus hedges.
Much of Casuarina's environmental work goes on behind the scenes. The beach happens to be a nesting site for hawksbill turtles, so the resort keeps the area dark during nesting season with low-wattage lights that won't confuse the turtles. The tropical forest? It's a "carbon sink" that offsets the CO2 the resort generates. Minimal use of chemical fertilizer means less harmful run-off and healthier near-shore coral reefs. Showers, sinks, and toilets employ water-saving devices. Everything from kitchen scraps to palm fronds are composted.
Yet guests get the full resort experience. "We won't compromise service," says Duffy-Mayers. "But we ensure that our resources are not wasted." Same goes for the guests' resources. Kitchenettes in the rooms spare visitors the island's typically high restaurant bills.
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