In which the Intrepid Explorer takes Many Pictures of a Large Rock, and imagines Himself to be Patrick McGoohan, but without the Cool Jacket

In the vast, empty center of Australia lies Uluru, known by the white man as Ayer's Rock until the Aboriginals won title to the land 15 years ago. It's a sedimentary rock, which means that millions of years ago, the semi-arid region (not a real desert) across which hundreds of thousands of tourists troop, was the bottom of an inland sea. You wouldn't think a rock would be that big a deal, but rising out of the flat, Martian-red landscape (rust-colored by the high concentration of iron oxides in the soil), it really is quite haunting. To the Aboriginals, it is the body of a giant from the early days of the Dreaming, the Aboriginal creation story. Marks in its side show where the Poisonous Snake Men struck it with spears, and every cave and rockfall has mythic significance to the people.

Out of respect for (a) the Aborigines' beliefs and (b) my knees, I opted not to climb it. In any case, it looked like pretty treacherous going, and while I was there they closed the climb due to high winds, which on the ground didn't seem to me all that stiff. Instead, I took an Aboriginal-guided walk through the bush, which was relatively lush due to heavy rains earlier in the year. I learned about bush tucker -- the little plants and fruits you can survive on away from civilization -- found out how to make glue and carrying baskets, and practiced throwing a spear at an imaginary kangaroo. Let's just say I pose no threat to the kangaroo population.

In the evening, I attended the Sounds of Silence dinner, in which we ate out in the desert, under a canopy of Southern Hemisphere stars. It was what you might call chilly, but fortunately they had a good supply of wine. I ate a kangaroo that someone more skilled with a spear than I had prepared (and no, it does NOT taste like chicken), as well as emu sausage and barramundi, an Australia fish. I also got to see the Southern Cross and our nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. Anybody? Anybody? 4.3 lightyears. Pretty cool.

For all the natural magnificence of the stars and the sand and the rock, plus pigeons that, with tufts of their heads and extravagant tails, are really overdoing it in the adornment department, a couple days in the area can make you feel like tourist cattle. Before dawn everybody piles onto the bush, drives to the rock, piles off the bush, shoots a gazillion pictures of the rock, piles back onto the bus, then repeats the whole thing for sunset.

The only place to stay in the area is the Ayers Rock Resort, a group of hotels of varying prices (all high) and amenities clustered around an artificial "town square," which is basically a water fountain surrounded by T-shirt shops. At first it seemed so ordinary that I didn't actually take a picture of it to show you, but it quickly starts to feel amazingly artificial. I began to think I was like The Prisoner on that old British TV show, and I was expecting music to come blaring out of loudspeakers and everybody to start twirling umbrellas at any minute.

Prisoner: Where am I?
Voice-Over Guy: In the Village.
P: What do you want?
VOG: Your money.
P: Whose side are you on?
VOG: The tourists, of course.
VOG: We want your dollars, your deutschmarks, your yen.
P: You won't get them!
VOG: By hook or by crook, we will.
P: Who are you?
VOG: I'm Jamie, your tourguide. G'day mate.
VOG: You are on tour bus number 6.
P: I am not a number! I am a free man!
VOG: Bwah-haha-hah!

Once I thought I saw a tourist wander away from the roped off area to look at an interesting bird. A giant bubble ate him.