To her right, the smooth, soaring cliffs on the face of the sandstone seemed to disappear like the walls of a cathedral into the pale, eggshell-blue of an early sky. Those towering cliffs always made her pause on the way in, to soak and sit on the polished wood branches of the free-form seating and listen. Absorb. Feel. The anticipation building.

The deep scores of the grained wood of the bench seeped like the stroke of cold fingers into her skin as she sat, the crisp morning air soothing her heart, the silence broken only by the soft rustle of the leaves in the gum above her. The crackle of creatures in the undergrowth calmed her.

She spied the tail of a lizard. Watched the thorny devil as he shifted, patient beside the ant trail, until his tongue flicked out to gobble up another small worker. Denise had told her that the ngiyari could drink with his feet, standing like a spiky armoured vehicle in a puddle and shifting the water up capillaries along the grooves to his mouth like a marvel of science.

She was so glad she’d come. She stood and walked slowly towards the end of the gully where the water flowed into the smooth folds of the secret place and the captured pool, absorbing the peace as the gully enfolded her in a mystical embrace in welcome and empathy. It was always healing.

At the end on the fenced wooden platform, she sat and drank in her personal restoration, allowing her senses to open fully to the spirit of the rock. To renew. To breathe. Slowly, the residual agitation beneath her skin seeped away, flowing down to the earth to be absorbed into the red dirt beneath the wood, and her muscles eased. This was the reason she’d been drawn here before. This quiet, spiritual place gave her calm and strength, and re-energised her depleted stores, because this date always held sadness for what might have been. A birthday that never grew in years. This place of families understood.

She always came here at least once as she passed on her way to Alice Springs, or when she could fit it in around the shifts at Yulara – and every time she came away changed. Setabilly Station lay closer to Mount Conner than Uluru, but each time Ava visited she wondered if this was where she’d been born in another life.

The sound of approaching voices – tourists – echoing quietly from the soaring granite walls around her made her stand, murmur her thanks, blow a kiss to the sky and leave before the seclusion was broken. Then she walked back to her car and drove to work.