Photo of Castle Rock, Near Alice Springs

Location: 
Chambers Pillar Historical Reserve, 100 miles south of Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Outback Australia

In the Dreamtime it is said the Gecko ancestor Itirkawara left the Finke River and journeyed north east. As he traveled he grew into a huge and powerfully built man of super human strength and with an extremely violent temper. On the way home to his birthplace he challenged and killed, with his stone knife, a number of ancestors. Flushed with the ease of his success, he then disregarded the strict marriage code and took a wife from the wrong skin group. His enraged relatives banished him and the girl. The two retreated into the desert, Itirkawara raging in fury, the girl shrinking from him in deep shame. Among the dunes they rested and turned into prominent rocky formations - Itirkawara into the Pillar, and the girl, still turning her face away from him in shame, into Castle Rock, around 500 metres away.