Photo of Chambers Pillar, Near Alice Springs
Location:
Chambers Pillar Historical Reserve, 100 miles south of Alice
Springs, Northern Territory, Outback Australia
Erosion by wind and rain has left an isolated pillar of 350
million year old sandstone, rising 150 ft above the surrounding
plain
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.