There is a God who spoke this ancient stone into existence, when the first dawn broke over this landscape, when the ochre red rejoiced at its own birth. No explorers were there to sketch it, no photographer to capture its light. When God commanded that stone to stand as a sentinel, or that the twisting white branches of the Gum Tree entangle the sweeping clouds, no human eye gazed on this wonder and was lost in worship. There was just the Maker. It was simply God and his Creation.

Further away than most can imagine, beyond the carefully constructed images broadcast around the world, sits an ancient stone atop a regal perch. For countless years this stone has stood witness to the spectacle of God’s creative brilliance. Day beyond number have cast its wandering shadow across the landscape, a testimony to the sheer power of God’s enduring word. The stone is clothed in ochre red, a brilliant protest against the azure sky that casts a blanket of suppression over the land and is stitched seamlessly into an unbroken line where the two meet. Below the ancient stone, a throne of fissured rock falls away in fearful wonder to jade depths of tepid water rich with life.

This is the Australian Outback. Immortalised by European poets for over two centuries, but first recorded by an ancient people who etched and imprinted its story into the very escarpments they lived beneath. This was my childhood home.

The land invites exploration, it calls to you from every hidden corner with a voice that echoes just beyond reach. It is a land rich with wander-lust, a meandering desire to see what may rest beyond the next horizon. But you will never find it. There is a mystery here, ancient but throbbing with life. Artists and poets alike, both ancient and new, have fought to find the images that will finally capture and subdue this aged mystery. But they have failed. Instead, they have only drawn to the surface a fragment, a piece to the puzzle, that does not slake our lust to know, but only fuels it. We see a refracted beauty, and dream of its source, wondering at where this beauty was birthed, so we refill our packs and set off once again.

Searching. Exploring. Turning over stone, descending every precipice, wading every stream, looking for beauty.

But is beauty only made in the discovery? Is something only beautiful when it is admired? Or does beauty exist beyond our naming of it?

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