The CLIMB looked too formidable to me, at least on this first weary saunter, so close to our exertions of the day before. Nor is it without its perils at any time. Five memorial stones driven into the side of the Rock where the ascent begins remember those who have so far been killed climbing it – Brian Strieff; Brian Joseph Miller (aged 25 – died from a fall in 1978); Ernest Francis Jones; Marcia Burniston (also aged 25 – from Yorkshire – died December 22, 1963); and Leslie Arthur Thwaites of Newcastle, N.S.W., ‘who died on top of this Rock on 15th June 1972, aged 63. The climbing of Ayers Rock was one of his life long ambitions.’

So we took a gentle exploratory drive around its base instead, noting that it really did have a front and a behind, a sombre visage with which to confront its visitors, and three huge humpy buttocks to the rear. Further reason – since all things that have behinds are sad – for its lumpish heaviness of spirits. Then we drove back towards Yulara to a spot marked SUNSET VIEWING AREA, a site to which we were to become immoderately attached over the next few days and from which we would find it difficult to drag ourselves away, not only on account of the pleasure in itself of watching the Rock flame scarlet for a few minutes as the sun went down, but also because of the social excitement, the sheer conviviality, which the occasion generated. Whatever else was or wasn’t happening in the desert, you always knew where the party was at sunset, in which direction everybody would be facing, and how aware of one another the act of marvelling at an unfractured block of arkose made them.

We were there advantageously early on our first evening, with nothing to prevent us from taking up the very best possible viewing position except not knowing which the very best possible viewing position was. We changed our parking place half a dozen times, sometimes racing into a spot vacated by a vehicle which then went racing into ours. We were all uncertain together – the automobile drivers, the jeep drivers, the patrol-van drivers, even the adventure bus drivers – that was part of the fun. Once we were within twenty minutes of the event for which we had assembled, people began to stride out into the desert with fixed expressions on their faces and their cameras cocked, as if the Rock were a powerful magnet whose influence they lacked all power to resist. Others climbed on to the roofs of their vans and fixed tripods and swigged beer. A Frenchman backed his wife into the scrub, the Rock over her right shoulder. ‘Avant cinq pas, s’il te plaît.’

‘Ici?’

‘Oui, ça suffit.’

‘Trop loin?’

His eye was to his Canon. ‘Pas là-bas, pas là-bas, pas là-bas.’

‘Ici?’ She was now ankle-deep in spinifex, her trim shoes dusted red. ‘Oui.’

‘Oui. Allons. Je te photographie.’