Saturday, January 5, 2008

Friend on the rock

Bruce Hudson is no ordinary Australian friend. During my childhood in South Grafton, although our respective educational establishments were strictly antipodean [Bruce at prestigious Knox Grammar School in Sydney, and me at the public school in South Grafton], I got to know and admire this fellow as if he were a friendly icon of urban civilization, with profound attachments to my family, and a symbol (with the help of his father and uncle... with maybe a little push from my own father) of the great old-fashioned pioneering spirit of Australia. Bruce became my mate and hero. Meanwhile, he also turned into an authentic man of the bush. What I'm saying is not idle poetry. Bruce learned to live in the bush, and he has stayed that way. Today, he and his wife Debbie are operating three hundred acres of beef-cattle land out near Young.

Bruce Hudson has just sent me a fabulous series of photos of Australia's sacred rock, Uluru.

The aerial nature of these shots reminds me that Bruce's splendid father Eric Hudson [businessman, town councilor of South Grafton and great friend of my father] once invited me to fly, for the first time, in his Tiger Moth aircraft at South Grafton.

Australia's sacred mountain is a mystery. A rock that just happens to have appeared there in the distant past, in the middle of nowhere, like the black slab in Kubrick's Space Odyssey. Like my modest but magic Cournouze, opposite Gamone [see the photo at the top of my blog], Uluru changes color in a mysterious manner.

Several years ago, when talking with my friend Natacha Boudoul about the fabulous mountain of Mary Madeleine alongside Marseille, I evoked the crazy idea that sacred sites of this kind might communicate with one another, as it were, through some kind of terrestrial radiation. In receiving Bruce Hudson's images of Uluru, I'm convinced that this magic mountain-to-mountain radiation does in fact exist. And it functions perfectly. It's called the Internet.

4 comments:

  1. Unfortunaly Uluru has become a kind of fast food. Your friend's pictures are amazing, but, when you are there and you need to fight a screaming crowd to get a good perspective, everything changes. There are too many signs telling you what you need to do and where you have to go. Everything drives you to the shortest way: you must hurry up cause too many people are waiting for the next shift!

    I experienced the sacrecy of the Australian center later on on the day. I was not in a famous spot: just somewhere along the road with three other people. Laying in a swag, looking up at the sky and talking softly: that was the best part. I reckon that the nearest man was two hundreds kms far...

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  2. LINDAS IMAGENS EM SEU BLOG...
    PARABÉNS, SEU BLOG É LINDÍSSIMO

    ABRAÇOS

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  3. Ayer’s rock, 2nd biggest rock formation transforms into beautiful shades of blue, violet to radiant red with progression of the day. The most popular activity of climbing, though considered inauspicious by locals, is believed to tread upon dreaming trail. Another rock formation near Urulu is Kata Tjuta, also known as the Olgas, which means several heads, is interesting visit. For more information, visit: http://www.journeyidea.com/urulu-the-extraordinary-pebble-part-iv/

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ayer’s rock, 2nd biggest rock formation transforms into beautiful shades of blue, violet to radiant red with progression of the day. The most popular activity of climbing, though considered inauspicious by locals, is believed to tread upon dreaming trail. Another rock formation near Urulu is Kata Tjuta, also known as the Olgas, which means several heads, is interesting visit.

    ReplyDelete